the journal of winston churchill spring 2008 • number 138

Transcription

THE JOURNAL OF WINSTON CHURCHILL
SPRING 2008 • NUMBER 138
THE CHURCHILL CENTRE & CHURCHILL MUSEUM
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aT THE
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ARTICLES
16 We’ll Always Have Boston: Bill Buckey, Churchillian • Richard M. Langworth
20 Present at the Creation: Danny Mander at Teheran, 1942-43 • An Interview with Susan Kidder
The French Connection
24 Lion of Britain, Cross of Lorraine: Churchill and de Gaulle • Terry Reardon
30 Churchill’s French: Much Better Than You Thought it Was • James R. Lancaster
34 “Seeing Claw to Claw”: A Synopsis • Will Morrissey
Churchill Proceedings
35 Did Singapore Have to Fall? • Richard M. Torre, Raymond P. Callahan, David Jablonsky
42 History Detectives: Was Leopold Guilty? • The Editor
SPRING 2008 • NUMBER 138
COVER
“The Firth of Forth,”
Coombs 136, c. 1925.
Violet Bonham Carter
remembered when
Churchill became
First Lord of the
Admiralty in
1911:
“I saw in
Winston’s
face a radiance like the
sun....he said
to me with
grave but
shining eyes....
‘Your father has just
offered me the
Admiralty’....His whole life
was invested with a new
significance. He was tasting
fulfilment. Never, before or
since, have I seen him
more completely and
profoundly happy.”
(See also back cover.)
Reproduced by kind
permission of Churchill
Heritage Ltd. DEPARTMENTS
Despatch Box 4 • Editor’s Essay 6
Datelines 7 • Around & About 9
Glimpses 12 • Wit & Wisdom 13
Action This Day 14 • Riddles 19
History Detectives 42
Poems Churchill Loved 55
Churchill Quiz 57 • Ampersand 58
Local Contacts 59
47 BOOKS, ARTS & CURIOSITIES
Give Jack a break! John
Strange Spencer Churchill,
Ted Hutchinson
reports, is no longer
strange to Churchill
historiography,
thanks to Celia
and John Lee
...Warren F.
Kimball
admires Peter
Stansky’s
account of the
London Blitz
... Alfred
James has a
contemplative smoke
with
Churchill’s
Cigar ...
Churchill goes to
war with Brian Lavery
while Christopher H.
Sterling looks on ... The
Editor reports three great
new “standard works”
involving Churchill and
Mohandas Gandhi,
Chartwell and the
“Fateful Decisions” of
World War II ... Joshua
Greenberg in search of
Churchill in the Crimea.
D E S PAT C H B O X
FAST AIRCRAFT
Number 138 • Spring 2008
ISSN 0882-3715
www.winstonchurchill.org
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Senior Editors:
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James Lancaster
James W. Muller
News Editor:
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Contributors
Alfred James, Australia;
Terry Reardon, Canada;
Inder Dan Ratnu, India;
Paul Addison, Winston S. Churchill,
Robert A. Courts, Sir Martin Gilbert CBE, Allen Packwood, United Kingdom;
David Freeman, Ted Hutchinson
iiWarren F. Kimball, Michael McMenamin, Don Pieper,
Christopher Sterling, Manfred Weidhorn, United States
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Produced by Dragonwyck Publishing Inc.
Further to Gene Lasser (FH
137:5), I believe the two fastest WW2
piston-engine fighters were the
North American P51, (437 mph at
25,000 ft) and Sydney Camm’s
brutal Tempest (435 mph at lower
altitudes, able even to mix it with
Me262s and V-1s). Both were
designed for different roles, at
which they excelled, but the 2500hp
required to push a Tempest to such
speeds at low levels meant it was
soon modified to carry up to a ton
of bombs and rockets for ground
attack, making it one of the first true
fighter/attack aircraft. The P51
could also carry a one-ton external
payload, but its low-level performance was seriously compromised by
its beautiful laminar wings.
De Havilland’s Mosquito,
however, was designed as a bomber
with a two-ton internal payload. It
was so fast that it did not need
defensive weapons, and became
faster when its original turrets were
removed. When fitted with forward
cannon and machine guns, it was
probably the world’s only bomber/fighter! For comparison,
imagine a 400+ mph B25.
The point is, aircraft nomenclature is problematic, even within a broadly agreed group. Sir Winston
would have loved the chance to be pedantic, and might have said: “This
is the sort of nonsense up with
which I will not put!” But call the
Mossie the fastest piston-engine
bomber and there is not much room
for pedantry. Nothing came within a
bull’s roar of it.
GREG HUGHES, EMERALD, QLD., AUSTRALIA
COMPARISON TROUBLES
In your editor’s essay (FH 136:
6) you state, “It seems hardy possible to compare Bush, who opted for
war at any price, to Chamberlain,
who opted for peace at any price.”
On the contrary, it is very possible
and instructive to compare them.
Neither man understood the world
in which he led his nation. For
example, Chamberlain predicted
“peace” after Munich. In early 1940,
FINEST HoUR 138 / 4
before Germany invaded Denmark
and Norway, he claimed Hitler had
“missed the bus.” Similarly, Bush said we would
find weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq. No such weapons have been
found. In May 2003, he told us the
mission had been accomplished in
Iraq. In October 2004, he told us he
had made no mistakes. The last two
statements were self-corrected in
December 2005. For months thereafter, he told us we were making
progress in Iraq; so much progress
that he completely changed strategy
and after months of refusing to send
more troops (even though urged to
do so by many supporters) he
finally did so. In short, far from
being like Winston Churchill, Bush
is far more like Neville
Chamberlain.
JAMES LYNCH, LIVINGSTON, N.J.
Editor’s response: I search in
vain for examples of Chamberlain’s
“self-corrections.” Chamberlain
declared war, which Bush didn’t (to
his later detriment?). And Saddam
wasn’t Hitler. Situations compare,
but not individuals. There are too
many variables: which is what I suggested about the attempt to compare
Bush and Chamberlain. That silly sign, “Mission
Accomplished,” like the sloganbedecked wallpaper Mr. Bush and
his rivals drape behind their speaking rostrums, referred to the
removal of Saddam, not the end of
the war—but speaks to the foolhardiness, as you suggest, of backing
oneself with slogans. We found no
ready-made nukes, but the capability was clear, and “WMD” includes
biological and chemical weapons,
which did exist and were used. But
Mr. Bush exaggerated his case—
more or less like the Member of
Parliament who, on 19 March 1935,
asserted prematurely that Britain
had lost air superiority. That MP
was Mr. Churchill—which doesn’t
render Churchill’s larger case less
valid, nor suggest any comparison
to Bush. Comparisons are cheap,
and far too easily indulged.
WINSTON AS RADIC-LIB
Churchill’s century-old
“Untrodden Field in Politics,”
which you dug up and bravely
printed in FH 137: 58-60, is a
classic statement of modern (i.e.,
interventionist) Liberalism and is
as apropos to America in 2008 as
the day it was written—down to
justifying the estate tax. As a
flaming left-Churchillian, I say,
“Bravo, Winston!”
MANFRED WEIDHORN, FAIR LAWN, N.J.
Editor’s response: Manfred
Weidhorn, author of four fine
works on Churchill, is the dean of
authorities on WSC’s writings, but
we always thought Manny was an
equal-opportunity contrarian! WHITELAW REID
Further to my piece on U.S.
Ambassador Whitelaw Reid (FH
137:11), Reid’s gossipy letters
contain other nuggets. The following is from Royal Cortissoz, The
Life of Whitelaw Reid (2 vols.; New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1921), vol. II, Politics—Diplomacy:
“The ‘enfant terrible’ of the
Liberal party, Winston Churchill,
received a prodigious amount of
attention in the political talk of
1905. Campbell-Bannerman [the
new Liberal Prime Minister] who
expected to have him in the government, nevertheless spoke to
Reid about him with complete
frankness, deprecating his lack of
judgment and his faculty for vituperation. ‘He told amusing
stories,’ Reid wrote to the
President [Theodore Roosevelt]
‘about the extraordinary care with
which Winston prepares his
speeches, commits them to
memory and even (as he was said
to have told himself) practices
them before the mirror in his
room. The most curious point of
all, perhaps, was that Winston had
told him of his preparation for
two or three possible interruptions
that the other side might make,
and of his having carefully written
out the appropriate reply for each
possibility.’” (312; see also pp. 31415, 317-18, 401-02)
DAUN VAN EE, HISTORICAL SPECIALIST
MANUSCRIPT DIVISION
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
BRACKEN ON BRACKEN
Your editor’s essay (FH 137:
6) refers to how Churchill rarely
publicly acknowledged the role
played by close friends such as
the “three terrible B’s”: Bracken,
Beaverbrook and Birkenhead. A
notable exception was in June
1940, shortly after he became
Prime Minister, when he named
my uncle to the Privy Council.
The King demurred, which left
Churchill “surprised and not a
little disturbed,” but he would not
be put off honouring his most
faithful follower. As he wrote to
the King’s secretary: “Mr Bracken
is a Member of Parliament of distinguished standing and exceptional ability. He has sometimes
been almost my sole supporter in
the years when I have been striving to get this country properly
defended, especially from the air.
He has suffered, as I have done,
every form of official hostility.
Had he joined the ranks of the
time-servers and careerists who
were assuring the public that our
air force was larger than that of
Germany, I have no doubt that he
would long ago have attained
high office.” On 7th June 1940
Bracken was sworn in.
BRENDAN BRACKEN, DALKEY, IRELAND
Editor’s response: Mr. Bracken
and his uncle’s biographer,
Charles Lysaght, were guests of
our Churchill’s Scotland Tour at
Sedbergh School on May 4th. He
is quite right, but WSC’s comments to the King were not public.
PROMISED LAND REVIEW
I appreciate the very positive
comments Ronald Cohen wrote
about my book, Churchill’s
Promised Land (FH 137: 49-50), in
his review of it and Martin
Gilbert’s Churchill and the Jews.
However, there were several
FINEST HOUR 138 / 5
notable omissions and mistakes
that I wish to clear up.
Cohen did not convey accurately my main arguments, and
overstated my criticism of
Churchill, who comes through as
a sophisticated and complex
statesman focused on Britain’s
strategic and imperial interests,
and sometimes inevitably on his
own political interests. Yet
Churchill managed to engage and
eventually support the new and
unusual cause of Zionism for
largely sentimental reasons—civilizational, religious, ideological—
and at times for strategic reasons.
Over time he became more proZionist—especially as he viewed
Zionism aligning with British
interests. Ironically, as Churchill
learned more about Zionism, the
British establishment became
more anti-Zionist, which caused
him some political problems. The Churchill in this story is
not as knowledgeable and consistent as he is prescient, imaginative
and often gutsy. Indeed, by understanding WSC’s view of Zionism,
we get a better understanding of
his overall world view. Cohen wrongly claims that
my book is based mainly on secondary instead of primary
sources, and that I ignore the antiJewish riots in Wales in 1911 (they
are on page 66). Finally, I think
Cohen should have disclosed in
his review that he reviewed Sir
Martin’s manuscript before publication, as noted in that book. Overall, as Cohen notes,
“Both books are excellent contributions to the subject,” but he fails
to explain that Sir Martin’s and
mine have different emphases,
approaches and arguments, offer
different information, and often
come to different conclusions.
They both illuminate aspects of
Winston Churchill and hopefully
enrich the academic field of the
greatest statesman of recent times. DR. MICHAEL MAKOVSKY
FOREIGN POLICY DIRECTOR
BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER, WASHINGTON
✌
E D I T O R ’ S E S S AY
Churchill’s Optimism
C
hurchill’s optimism for humanity was tempered with a conviction that “the genus
homo” never changes. The same imperfect being is presented by the advance of science
with increasingly potent and dangerous toys: “This vast expansion was unhappily not
accompanied by any noticeable advance in the stature of man, either in his mental faculties, or his moral character. His brain got no better, but it buzzed the more.”1
His splendid essay, “Mass Effects in Modern Life,” took up his concern about the levelling of man to a low common denominator: “Are not modern conditions—at any rate throughout the English-speaking communities—hostile to the development of outstanding personalities
and to their influence upon events”?2 Churchill wondered.
Would the “moral philosophy and spiritual conceptions of men and nations” hold their
own against “formidable scientific evolutions”?3 Was it possible that, in abandoning its theocratic principles, mankind would lose the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, and substitute instead a kind of vague, utopian concept of wishful thinking? Churchill worried not so
much that those who forget the past are condemned to relive it, but that the loss of the past
would mean “the most thoughtless of ages. Everyday headlines and short views.”4
In the end Churchill hoped that a merciful Providence would pass “the sponge of oblivion across much that is suffered”: a “blessed dispensation,” through which pain would be forgotten and glory and honor exalted.5 Although often pilloried as an extremist by both the Left
and Right, Winston Churchill genuinely believed in a “middle road” between the radicals and
the reactionaries, the jingoes and the appeasers. He was proud that his country’s constitution
was unwritten, that “the English never draw a line without blurring it.”6
Sir Martin Gilbert, who, while writing and editing over eight million words about
Winston Churchill, has the ability to summarize him in a few lines, captured the essence of the
Great Man when he wrote, in his final words of the official biography:
“Churchill was indeed a noble spirit, sustained in his long life by a faith in the capacity of
man to live in peace, to seek prosperity, and to ward off threats and dangers by his own exertions. His love of country, his sense of fair play, his hopes for the human race, were matched by
formidable powers of work and thought, vision and foresight. His path had often been dogged
by controversy, disappointment and abuse, but these had never deflected him from his sense of
duty and his faith in the British people….
“In the last years, when power passed, to be followed by extreme old age with all its
infirmity and sadness, Churchill’s children expressed to him in private the feelings which many
of his fellow countrymen also felt. In August 1955, four months after the end of his Premiership,
his son Randolph wrote to him: ‘Power must pass and vanish. Glory, which is achieved through
a just exercise of power—which itself is accumulated by genius, toil, courage and self-sacrifice—
alone remains’….From his daughter Mary had come words of equal solace nine years later,
when at last his life’s great impulses were fading. ‘In addition to all the feelings a daughter has
for a loving, generous father,” she wrote, “I owe you what every Englishman, woman & child
—RML
does—Liberty itself.’”7
1. WSC, House of Commons, 31 March 1949.
2. “Mass Effects in Modern Life,” Strand Magazine, May 1931.
3. “Fifty Years Hence,” Strand Magazine, February 1931.
4. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. V (London: Heinemann, 1976), 319.
5. Fourth Alamein Reunion, Empress Hall, London, 21 October 1939. Churchill, In the Balance (London: Cassell, 1951), 119.
6. WSC, House of Commons, 16 November 1948.
7. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. VIII (London: Heinemann, 1988), 1365-66.
FINEST HoUR 138 / 6
DATELINES
Quotation of the Season
23%: CHURCHILL WAS A MYTH
(OR: WHAT A RELIEF!
NOW WE CAN ALL GO HOME.)
LONDON, FEBRUARY 3RD— The poll to end polls,
published today by UKTV Gold and BBC
Worldwide, revealed that nearly onequarter of 3000 Britons surveyed think
Winston Churchill was a myth, while a
hefty majority of 58 percent believe that
Sherlock Holmes was real. Nearly half said
Richard the Lionheart was fictitious, while nearly one-quarter
doubt the existence of Crimean
War nurse Florence Nightingale. Canada’s Globe and Mail
speculated that some respondents
were so astonished at the questions that they played along and
lied—much as people exiting
voting booths tell pollsters they
voted for X when they really
voted for Y. Other “suspected myths”
included Mahatma Gandhi,
Charles Dickens, the Battle of
Waterloo and the Duke of
Wellington. And 33 percent said
they believed in the existence of
W. E. Johns’s fictional pilotadventurer Biggles.
And Biggles said, “Let there
be light.” And Holmes said, “We
shall go on to the end...we shall
never surrender.”And the winds
blew and the storm raged, and for
days the vision was bad...
BIG FEET, LITTLE GAFFES
President
George W. Bush invoked
Churchill here at the Union
League: “I did a little research
into the history, and it turns out
Winston Churchill came here in
1932—right before I was born.
When people think of Churchill,
of course they marvel at what he
managed to do with the English
language. When people think of
me...” (laughter).
CHICAGO, JANUARY 8TH—
he newspapers, with their alluring
headlines, do not do justice to the proportion of current events. Everyone is busy,
or is oppressed by the constant cares and difficulties of daily life. Headlines flicker each day before
them. Any disorder or confusion in any part of the
world, every kind of argument, trouble, dispute,
friction or riot—all flicker across the scene. People
go tired to bed, at the end of their long, bleak,
worrying days, or else they cast care aside, and
live for the moment.
“T
—WSC, HOUSE OF COMMONS, 12 DECEMBER 1946
“Winston Churchill, when
he came here, by the way—I dug
out a quote that I’d like to read to
you. He said, ‘Some...regard
private enterprise as a predatory
tiger to be shot. Others look on it
as a cow that they can milk. Only
a handful see it for what it really
is—the strong and willing horse
that pulls the whole cart along.’ I
WSC in America, 1932: he was 57
when he spoke at the Chicago Union
League—but 84 when he spoke of “the
strong and willing horse.”
don’t know if he said it right here
in this very hall, but that’s what
he said. Government policy ought
to recognize who’s pulling this
economy, and that would be the
entrepreneurs and workers of
America.” (Applause.)
The people who actually
“dug out” that quotation were
Phil and Sue Larson, who were
FINEST HOUR 138 / 7
contacted by the White House.
And there was no reason to
suspect he said it right there
because we told the White
House when Churchill said it: at
Woodford Green, Essex, on 29
October 1959. So it goes!
FH’s DEPUTY EDITOR
ELEUTHERA, BAHAMAS, FEBRUARY 25TH—
I today received permission
from our chairman and executive vice-president to list David
A. Turrell, our webmaster, as
deputy editor of Finest Hour.
I fully realise that Dave and
our web committee are preoccupied with website reconstruction
and do not intend to add to his
burden at this key time. But I
have been thinking about this a
long time and there are three
reasons for his appointment.
First, it is a natural fit. As
editor and webmaster we work
hand in glove with material for
FH that also goes (perhaps in
different form) onto the website.
Second, “time, the churl, is
running.” Dave Turrell is substantially younger than I am,
which is actuarily significant. Third and most important,
Dave has the understanding,
panache and ability eventually to
become our next editor. He has
that all-important quality of sensitivity and judgement to avoid
publishing material that is >>
DATELINES
hagiographic, unfair or trivial. His
grasp of “the saga” is considerable, and in his role as webmaster
it will only increase. He is already
an authority on WSC’s books
through his own “Savrola”
website (www.savrola.co.uk). I
hope that our readers will think
well of this move, and will come
to know Dave as many of us who
work with him do already. RML
Noël Coward was recruited
as a spy in 1938. In 1942 Churchill
used the excuse of a relatively
minor court case to block the title.
Two months earlier Coward
had been fined a token £200 for
inadvertently breaching wartime
currency exchange laws by spending £11,000 on a trip to the USA.
On 29 December 1942 Churchill
wrote to the King: “I have examined in consultation with the
REMEMBERING DUFF
Chancellor of the Exchequer, the
PRAGUE, NOVEMBER 24TH—
details of the case against Mr Noël
Alfred Duff Cooper, a Coward. The Chancellor and Sir
relative of Britain’s Richard Hopkins are contented
Conservative
that it was one of substance and
Party leader
that the conferment of
David Cameron, Knighthood upon Mr. Coward so
who left Neville soon afterwards would give rise
Chamberlain’s
to unfavourable comment. With
cabinet in 1938
considerable personal reluctance I
over Munich, was have therefore come to the concluremembered today sion that I could not advise Your
when the Czech
Majesty to proceed with this progovernment presented posal on the present occasion.”
Cameron with a 1940 letter
Coward was recruited in
from Duff Cooper to the then
1938 by Sir Robert Vansittart, a
Czech Prime Minister, Edvard
Foreign Office mandarin, who
Benes, exiled in Britain during the instructed Coward on a mission to
Nazi occupation.
the U.S.: “Try to get them on to
Duff Cooper never regretted the topic [of Nazi threat] as much
his resignation: “I believe it would as possible and let them rip.”
have been better for Britain and
In 1940, Coward was recruitEurope, as well as for Czechoed by Sir William Stephenson of
slovakia, if we had stood firm
British Security Coordination in
instead of surrendering.” New York, who asked him to
Duff Cooper was appointed
target key American opinion
Minister of Information in
formers. The 43-year-old playChurchill’s cabinet a few days
wright, who worked in secrecy,
after he wrote to Benes. His father was vilified by a furious British
was Cameron’s great-great-grand- press who assumed he was
father. Cameron said he was
staying in America as a ruse to
proud of Duff, who died in 1954
avoid the war. In a letter to
aged 63. His bond with the
Vansittart dated 21 August 1940, a
Czechs is “in my blood,” Cameron frustrated but naive Coward
added. “He stood up for your
wrote: “Would it be possible to tell
country, and for freedom.”
the State Department the truth,
which is that I was sent over by
NYET ON SIR NOËL
the Ministry of Information to
LONDON, NOVEMBER 12TH— Winston
work, with your approval, at
Churchill personally blocked a
gauging various cross sections of
knighthood for Noël Coward even American opinion and reporting
though the playwright had spied
on it?....I think it would do away
for Britain during the war, accord- with a lot of the false rumour and
ing to The Letters of Noël Coward,
wild surmise. I am most definitely
published today.
not over here on personal busiFINEST HOUR 138 / 8
Noël Coward
ness....If however it were possible
for me not to be quite disowned in
all directions I think it would
strengthen my hand.”
He later wrote: “If I ran away
and refused to have anything to
do with the war and lived comfortably in Hollywood, as so
many of my friends have done, I
would be ashamed to the end of
my days.” Coward was knighted
in 1970 and died three years later.
—CHRIS HASTINGS, DAILY TELEGRAPH
Finest Hour’s opinion:
Such judgments and assumptions that are not warranted by
what we know of Churchill and
Coward’s relationship, as repeatedly suggested by the literature:
• 8 July 1938, WSC to his
wife: “I have not yet lost the
impression of that lovely play of
Noël Coward’s [Operette] and I am
ashamed to say I have not written
him as I meant to do.” —Martin
Gilbert, ed., Winston S. Churchill,
Companion Volume 5, Part 3
(London: 1982, 1095).
• August 1941: “Mr.
Churchill asked if any officer in
the ship had a record of Noël
Coward’s ‘Mad Dogs and
Englishmen.’ This was produced,
and Mr. Churchill proved that he
knew the words and the tune.” —H. V. Morton, Atlantic Meeting
(London: 1943, 62).
•30 November 1964: WSC
“had dinner at 7 p.m. so that he
could watch the BBC tribute
“Ninety Years On,” the starpacked variety show introduced
by Noël Coward....He enjoyed the
programme immensely...” —Roy
Howells, Simply Churchill
(London: 1965, 166). Also incorrect is the notion
that Churchill was a homophobe,
given his friendships with people
like Eddie Marsh. Repeatedly his
concern about homosexuals was
their susceptibility to blackmail by
Britain’s enemies. Sir Martin Gilbert sent us his
view of the Churchill-Coward
relationship: “Churchill was a
friend and admirer of Coward,
but breaching of currency regulations—as advised by the
Treasury—would always be a
barrier to an honour. As you
know, we are mired in honours
scandals just now. Even so, note
that it was a knighthood ‘just
now’ that Churchill advised
against—and only ‘on the present
occasion.’ See my volume VII,
1327 on their dinner in May 1945.” Coward himself recalled that
evening in his Future Indefinite
(London: 1954, 327-28): “The
Prime Minister was at his most
benign, and suddenly, towards the
end of dinner, looking across the
table at the man who had carried
England through her dark years, I
felt an upsurge of gratitude that
melted into hero worship. This
was a profoundly significant
moment in the history of our
country; the long, long hoped-for
victory was so very near, and the
fact that we were in the presence
of the man who had contributed
so much foresight, courage and
genius to winning it struck Juliet
[Duff] and Venetia [Stanley] at the
same instant that it struck me.
Emotion submerged us and
without exchanging a word, as
simultaneously as though we had
carefully rehearsed it, the three of
us rose to our feet and drank Mr.
Churchill’s health.” —RML >>
AROUND & ABOUT
O
n the 80th anniversary of the Battle of
Passchendaele, Garrison Keillor (on U.S.
National Public Radio’s “Literary Calendar”) quoted a
few lines from the immortal poem “In Flanders Fields,”
(FH 121:6) and then criticized the poet, John McRae (FH 137:56) for
suggesting that the dead wished the living to “take up the quarrel with
the foe.” Bad advice, Keillor said: It is never right to prolong a war (or
words to that effect). Mr. Keillor forgets the national aspirations that were
met through that conflict, and continue today. From Estonia to Poland
and Czechoslovakia, peoples long under the yokes of oppressors were
presented for the first time in anyone’s memory with nationhood. We
were reminded of this when we fell over Churchill’s review of World
War I in The Aftermath, vol. IV of The World Crisis (London: Thornton
Butterworth, 1929),159: “The war had been fought to make sure that the
smallest state should have the power to assert its lawful rights against
even the greatest; and this will probably be for several generations an
enduring fact.” Thanks to another (cold) war, it is a fact forever.
❇❇❇❇❇
Mark Kurlansky, reviewing Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke
in The Los Angeles Times, March 9th, said World War II “was a particularly hard sell. Roosevelt and Churchill did it well and their lies have
been with us ever since.” He continued with discredited arguments we
have all heard before. For example: Kurlansky says everyone who
dragged the western world into the war was an anti-Semite: Churchill,
Roosevelt, Chamberlain. Even Hitler, apparently. —DAVID FREEMAN
❇❇❇❇❇
Terry Reardon of ICS Canada reports a new children’s book,
Winston of Churchill, “one bear’s fight against global warming,” for ages
6 and up. Churchill, Manitoba, the polar bear capital of the world, is
named after John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough. Winston is a
“fierce brave bear” alarmed because the ice is melting in polar bear territory around Hudson’s Bay. He gathers his fellow bears around him and
exhorts them with expressions like “We will fight for ice...we shall defend
our island,” etc. Mrs. Winston says Winston’s cigar smoking is polluting
the air, so he switches to chewing a twig! Details at www.pgcbooks.ca or
the author’s website www.jeandaviesokimoto.com.
❇❇❇❇❇
David Wondrich writes about “the story of the Manhattan [cocktail] being invented for a dinner at the Manhattan Club hosted by Jennie
Jerome to celebrate Samuel Tilden’s election etc. etc. About five
minutes of Googling will uncover the fact that Tilden was elected in
November 1874, when La Jerome was in England, giving birth to
Winston Churchill. (In fact, the banquet was held on the day Winston
was christened; Jennie Jerome’s only connection with the Manhattan
Club was the fact that the Club later moved into a mansion which had
once belonged to her father). Contemporary newspaper accounts of the
two Manhattan Club banquets held for Tilden’s election make no
mention of Jennie Jerome, nor indeed of any woman present—these
were striclty stag affairs. And old bar guides, one that we have being
originally printed in 1860, list many a Manhattan cocktail.” Mr.
Wondrich’s piece is on wiki.webtender.com.
✌
FINEST HOUR 138 / 9
DATELINES
THE TEHERAN PLOT
CC
Board of Trustees
member Celia Sandys
is presenting in 2008
a TV documentary,
“The Lion and the
Bear,” on AngloRussian relations.
One part is devoted
to the Teheran
Conference in 1943, and
a plot to kill the Big Three,
masterminded by Hitler’s favorite
commando, Otto Skorzeny, the SS
saboteur who temporarily rescued
Mussolini in September 1943.
The plot, dubbed “Operation
Long Jump” by the Germans, was
foiled by Soviet agents including
then-19-year-old Georg Vartanian
who, during the filming, was
asked by Celia Sandys how they
had succeeded.
“Six German radio operators
had been dropped by parachute
into the holy city of Qum and
made it to Teheran, where they
established radio communication
with Berlin,” Vartanian said. “Day
and night we scoured the streets.
Eventually we found where the
group was hiding. From then on
the Germans were transmitting
messages to Berlin that were intercepted by the Soviet and British
intelligence. But the Nazi radio
operators were nobody’s fools,
and one sent a coded message,
‘we are under surveillance.’
“The Nazis decided against
sending the main group, led by
Skorzeny, to certain death,” he
told Celia. “Your grandfather was
staying at the British Embassy,
where he had security guards. But
the U.S. Embassy was on the city’s
outskirts and staying there was
too risky, so Roosevelt stayed in
the Russian Embassy.” (See the
Danny Mander story page 20.)
“The street between the
Soviet and British Embassies,
which were located close to each
other, had been sealed off. They
stretched a six-metre tarpaulin
sheet to make something like a
LONDON, NOVEMBER 29TH—
passage, guarded by Soviet and
British machine-gunners. All the
participants in the Teheran
Conference were able to go back
and forth safely. According to
some information, the Nazis
planned to get into the British
Embassy through a water supply
channel and assassinate Churchill
on his birthday, November 30th.
But these plans were foiled. I was
close enough to see your grandfather, Stalin and Roosevelt. What
struck me was their confidence
and calmness.”
“You must have had a
certain amount of luck,” said Ms.
Sandys. Vartanian agreed: “Luck
is important for many professions,
and all the more so for that of an
intelligence agent.”
—DAILY TELEGRAPH RUSSIA SUPPLEMENT
WSC AND THE PRESS
LONDON, FEBRUARY 8TH TO MAY 11TH—
Churchill
Centre and
Museum
headquarters, the
Cabinet
War
Rooms, is
offering an
exciting
temporary
exhibit on WSC as celebrity, from
his birth announcement in The
Times to his death in 1965.
Artifacts include a letter from
Winston to his mother detailing
his contract to act as a war correspondent for the Morning Post in
South Africa, and his letter from
the Staats Model School Prison in
Pretoria (both from the Churchill
Archives Centre).
The General Strike of May
1926 is documented by copies of
The British Gazette, edited by
Churchill on behalf of the government in the offices of the Morning
Post. A section on Churchill the
journalist displays his prolific
output of articles and his contracts
with various newspapers.
Visitors will learn about
FINEST HOUR 138 / 10
Churchill’s craving for news
during the Second World War.
Each morning he would read
almost every paper, sometimes
even ringing the Daily Mail at
midnight to get his news before
the papers went to press.
“Churchill and the Press” is
accompanied by an impressive
array of original newspapers,
domestic and foreign, courtesy of
John Frost’s Historical Newspaper
collection, as well as images from
Associated Newspapers and the
Imperial War Museum.
The Churchill Museum and
Cabinet War Rooms, at Clive
Steps, King Charles Street (tube
station Westminster) are open
daily from 9:30am to 6pm, the last
admission being at 5pm.
Admission costs £12, with children under 16 free and students
and senior citizens £9.50. There is
no extra charge for the Exhibition. LOYAL SUPPORTERS
LONDON, NOVEMBER 21ST, 1934— A Daily
Mail article from the John Frost
Historical Newspaper Collection
reveals what may be the first
Parliamentary intervention by
Churchill’s supporters in the campaign for rearmament. It reads:
“Mr. Churchill last night
tabled amendment in reply to the
King’s Speech on the opening of
the new session of Parliament:
‘That in the present circumstances
of the world the strength of
Britain’s national defences and,
especially of air defences, is no
longer adequate to secure the
peace, safety and freedom of your
Majesty’s faithful subjects.’
“This is a drastic step and as
he is supported by six of the most
influential ‘back benchers’ in the
House of Commons it is a
warning to the Government.” Those joining Churchill were
Sir Robert Horne, Chancellor of
the Exchequer, 1922; Leopold
Amery, Dominions Secretary 192529; Captain Freddie Guest,
Secretary for Air 1919-22; Earl
Winterton, Undersecretary for
India 1925-29; and Robert Boothby,
Parliamentary Private Secretary to
Churchill, 1925-29.
Although Brendan Bracken,
Harold Macmillan and Alfred
Duff Cooper joined Churchill’s
“troublesome young men,” this is
the earliest list we have seen of
these individuals of conscience.
MoD TO SELL WAR OFFICE
After more
than a century’s
illustrious
service, the
Ministry of
Defence is planning to sell the
Old War Office
Building opposite Horse
Guards. The
Ministry will ask £35 million for
the deteriorating but well-located
building, standing over underground tunnels that once connected it to some of the most sensitive
sites in Whitehall.
The War Office was used by
Secretaries of State for War and
senior staff officers until the MoD
was created in 1964. Churchill was
based there between 1919 and
1921. Kitchener and Lloyd George
worked there as war minister and
munitions minister during the
First World War, and T.E.
Lawrence was stationed there in
1914, drawing maps of the Middle
East based on his travels. The secret passages and their
connections gave pause, and the
Ministry of Defence considered
selling it to another government
department to retain their benefit.
But officials decided to put the
building on the market while
“maintaining the integrity” of the
Government Secure Zone of protected Whitehall sites
LONDON, DECEMBER 26TH—
ARABELLA CHURCHILL
GLASTONBURY, SOMERSET, DECEMBER 20TH—
Sir Winston’s granddaughter died
today aged 58—the same age as
her father, Randolph Churchill, at
his death in 1968. In her twenties,
Arabella, daughter of Randolph
and the former June Osborne, ran
off to join hippies in Glastonbury,
where she helped found the local
festival. Her son Jake, from her
first marriage to Jim Barton, was
born on a sheep farm they were
running in Wales. Mr. Barton left
his wife and son a year later. At
the time of her death, Jake Barton
was being arrested in Australia on
drug charges. Arabella also leaves
a daughter Jessica, 19, from her
second marriage to Ian “Haggis”
McLeod, a juggler fourteen years
her junior. R.I.P.
THE SEARCH FOR MARIO
LONDON, FEBRUARY 18TH— A British
game company producing “alternate reality” video games is developing a game called “Turning
Point: Fall of Liberty,” which
imagines what might have happened had Churchill been killed
while crossing Fifth Avenue, New
York, on 13 December 1931. (“My
New York Misadventure,” FH
136:24.) The game producers are
trying to find Mario Contasino,
the driver of the car involved, or
his descendants. So they’ve enlisted genealogists in the United
States. There is no record in the
U.S. Census, from 1790-1930, of
anyone with the last name of
Contasino. A search of Ellis Island
and Castle Garden immigration
records records only Giuseppe
Contasino, who arrived in 1913 at
the age of 1. There are no Social
Security records that record the
death (from about 1960 to present)
of anyone named Contasino.
So far, it’s a dead end. —THE TIMES
Finest Hour’s opinion: The
genealogists might have had better
results if they had searched for
“Constasino” instead of
“Contasino”! Then again, Churchill
himself might have misspelled the
name in his 1932 account.
It would appear that The New
York Times was responsible for the
misspelling “Contasino,” and for
wrongly describing Churchill’s
mistake while crossing Fifth
Avenue. From the Central Park
side WSC looked left, which was
of course correct. His mistake was
to continue to look left after he
was half-way across (as one does
in Britain) when he should have
looked right at the traffic coming
up the avenue, including
Constasino’s car. (In those days
Fifth Avenue had two-way traffic.) Churchill was admitted to
Lenox Hill Hospital on 13
December and discharged on the
21st. The book WSC autographed
for Constasino was My Early Life:
priceless if it ever surfaced today.
The “what if?” scenario is a
game which can be played
forever: “What if Japan had not
attacked Pearl Harbor?” etc.
Churchill himself enjoyed the
game, per his 1931 article, “If Lee
Had Not Won the Battle of
Gettysburg.” (FH 103:28). —JRL
DENTURES’ FINEST HOUR
LONDON, FEBRUARY 20TH— Two letters
from 1952 and 1954, to be auctioned by Bonham’s in March,
revealed a key ally without whom
Sir Winston might have struggled:
his dentist. Throughout his life,
Churchill feared that problems
with his teeth would affect his
public speaking, one of his most
powerful attributes. So he
relied on Sir Wilfred Fish, the
most acclaimed dentist of his generation, to supply him with dentures to deliver his rallying calls. Churchill showed his appreciation
in 1954, when he wrote Fish confirming his nomination for a
knighthood. Churchill, then 79,
also enclosed a set of his false
teeth for repair. He wrote: “I am
very glad it fell to me to recommend you for a well-deserved
honour. I enclose one set of dentures and I should be so much
obliged if you would tighten them
up a little for me. The others are
working very well.” Churchill’s false teeth, were
made to Fish’s specification by >> DATELINES
ERRATA
FH 136 page 29 column 3:
In the note entitled “Not WSC
on Castro,” Carole Martyn’s
name was misspelled, for which
apologies. Also, the alleged
statement by WSC about Castro
was not made during the 2005
Queen Mary 2 lectures but originates from other sources.
FH 137 page 20, column 2:
The CBE should be identified as
the “Most Excellent Order...”
not “Most Noble Order.” “Most
Noble” is the prefix for the
Order of the Garter.
DENTURES...
dental technician Derek Cudlipp.
One of the spares kept by Cudlipp
in case of emergency was donated
by his family to the Royal College
of Surgeons Museum in London. A spokesman said: “For
Churchill, a well-fitting denture
was a crucial physical and psychological prop. It allowed him to
speak effectively—a vital attribute
for any politician, and especially
for one whose speaking skills
were so central to his success.”
Churchill’s original dentures
were made from hardened rubber,
but he found them uncomfortable
and often put them in his pocket.
Once he sat on them, prompting a
frantic repair. A second version
was made with a larger palate,
which he found more comfortable. When Churchill was a 16year-old schoolboy at Harrow, his
mother complained about how
much money was being spent on
his dental bills. Later he suffered
from pain in his gums and was
tormented by toothache, which
developed into an abscess and
made his face swell to twice its
normal size. A painful wisdom
tooth was extracted in his teens,
when he recorded that he went to
sleep under anaesthetic and
“snored through the whole performance.” He lost many front
teeth in his 20s, prompting the
need for an upper set of dentures. Churchill suffered from a
pronounced lisp, which later
became a trademark that he
wanted to preserve with “soft
fitting” dentures. His sessions
with Sir Wilfred were accompanied by brandy in place of mouth-
wash, and two cigars. When WSC’s patience wore
thin at times of crisis, he would
place his thumb against the dentures while he was wearing them
and flick them against a wall. —PAUL BROSTER, DAILY EXPRESS
Glimpses: Marion Davies
The actress and mistress of William Randolph Hearst, Miss Davies entertained Churchill at her Santa Monica home on his California visit in 1929.
She offers (unintentionally?) the following hilarious vignette in her
posthumous memoirs, The Times We Had: Life with William Randolph
Hearst (New York: Ballantine Books, 1975). —JUDITH KAMBESTAD
C
hurchill was my house guest. He
came with [his brother Jack], his
son Randolph and Randolph’s
cousin John, who liked to play the piano.
They arrived in Charlie Schwab’s railroad
car, and they stayed at the beach house.
MGM gave a big reception for Churchill.
He had a sort of lisp, but it didn’t come
out over the microphone. He couldn’t
figure it out and I can’t figure it out, but a
lisp just does not register.
We went to the opening of the
Grand Hotel, and afterwards there was a
big party at the Roosevelt. I was working
then, so I didn’t see much of Churchill.
He was a very good house guest
WORTH1000.COM
because he had so many things to do
that he didn’t become a nuisance. And he stayed quite awhile,
maybe three or four weeks....He liked his scotch and his cigars. They
were what kept him alive...
[When we visited England] Churchill asked us to come down
for the weekend at his home....He had a place outside of London,
and he had this huge brick wall which he had built all by himself. And
he built a brick garage [cottage -Ed.]. He was quite an artist. He
painted apples and oranges and occasionally a bottle of gin or
something like that—but very artistically....
He had a big pond with swans, white and and black swans.
And one day they were fighting. One grabbed the other by the throat
and it was horrifying. Churchill was picking up stones and throwing
at them. He said, “Oh, you bally bloaters!” One swan was undoubtedly going to kill the other one, but he couldn’t stop it. He kept throwing rocks and stones and I decided that I didn’t want to look any
longer. I was chicken-hearted. I went up to the house with his son
Randolph, and we sat before the fireplace. It was always cold in
England. When he came back he said, “One is dead, naturally.”
I said, “Why do you have swans that fight?” Dumb Dora.
Churchill said, “Just show me one that doesn’t fight!” I didn’t know
anything about swans; I didn’t even know what the swans know. I
only knew Gloria Swanson. ✌
ON ANIMOSITY
Wit &
Wisdom
“I have always felt that a politician is to be
judged by the animosities he excites among his
opponents.” Many of us will ruefully recognize
and relate to Winston Churchill’s reflection.
I
n November 1906, Churchill gave
this toast to the Institute of
Journalists. The laughs were over his
references to heavy press criticism of
the new Liberal government, of
which he was a part. His later reference to
The Times Book Club—which produced
cheap editions of current books—was
likely prompted by his feud with the TBC,
which prematurely brought out a cheap
edition of Lord Randolph Churchill.
(WSC believed a cheap edition would cut
into the sales of the standard edition.)
THE PRESS
Winston S. Churchill
would like to pay a small tribute
to the London press, which
always says so many kind things
about the government (laughter),
and can always be relied upon all
occasions and in all difficulties to
give their unflinching and unstinted
support. Still, even if there were any
doubt of the government being sustained at every stage by the exertions of the press, I am inclined to
think we might be able to pull
through—in a sort of way.
It is astonishing to a public
man to notice how keenly sensitive
of journalistic criticism is the ordinary private person. Whatever may
happen he always desires to keep
up appearances in the press.
I heard a story of an American
editor who received the following
letter from a prominent citizen: “Dear Sir, I regret to inform
you that on my way home from the
saloon this evening I fell into a
political altercation with Colonel
Jonas D. Walker, of this town, in the
course of which a slight misunderstanding arose, and I am very sorry
I
to think that in the end I shot him. I
should add that, carried away by
the excitement of the moment, I also
scalped him (laughter). But I
earnestly hope that no exaggerated
account of this painful episode will
appear in the columns of your
paper” (laughter). If any public man in this
country had been drawn into such a
doubtful action, he would have
been haunted by no fears like those
which beset the writer. He would
know that there were two sides to
the question, and that if one section
of the press took one view the other
section would express the opposite.
He would go to bed with the full
consciousness of being able to read
in the Daily News next morning that
another blow had been struck on
the side of liberty (laughter) that
there had been another exhibition of
moral indignation in a righteous
cause, and that no great popular
movement had been carried to
success without occasional acts of
violence (more laughter). The Times, on the other hand,
would insist that the perpetrator of
the deed should be brought to
book—I might almost say brought
to the Book Club (laughter). He
would be reminded that his
methods of conducting political
arguments were unworthy of a
civilised age and invited to refer to
the methods of the manager of the
Times Book Club (laughter).
Politicians do well always to
pay close attention to anything said
about them in the press of a civil
nature. This civility is only a mark
of the high standard that journalism
has reached in this country. For my
FINEST HoUR 138 / 13
own part I have always felt that a
politician is to be judged by the animosities which he excites among
his opponents. I have always set
myself not merely to relish but to
deserve thoroughly their censure
(cheers). I asked myself whether the
power of the press is as great as
ever. If considered by the increased
output, I would say that the power
of the press has increased lately.
The machinery of the press grows
more and more powerful, but do
the writers get more and more powerful? I am inclined to think that
journalism is hampered rather than
aided by the ever-growing force of
its machinery. The French press is not so
wealthy nor so well equipped as the
British, but French journalists individually play their part in the political control of their country. There
the Chambers are divided between
the politicians and the journalists; in
England Parliament is controlled by
lawyers and Scotsmen (laughter).
In England the individual
writer ought to exert a greater
influence than is the case at
present. The signed article, I think,
ought to be a much more prominent feature in British journalism
than is the case today.
I gladly propose the toast
because the Journalists’ Institute
gives journalists a sense of corporate existence, and enables them to
be sure that in any great point of
principle they will not have to fight
single-handed. The Institute has a
lofty mission to perform, and exercises a high standard in the manner
of performing it (cheers). ✌
125-100-75-50 YEARS AGO
125 YEARS AGO:
Spring 1883 • Age 8
“Does not quite understand the
meaning of hard work”
by Michael McMenamin
W
inston was not doing well at
St. George’s School, where
he ranked eleventh among eleven
boys in the Winter term. He
moved up to ninth in the spring
term only because there were only
nine boys in his Division. The Spring Report showed
why: “Does not quite understand
the meaning of hard work—must
make up his mind to do so next
term. Writing good but so terribly
slow—Spelling about as bad as it
well can be.”
Churchill’s mother would
not have been surprised by the
spelling report, as evidenced by a
letter in early June: “My dear
Mamma, I hope you will come
and see me soon. Did Everest give
you my flour I sent you. Give my
love to my ants, and tell not to
forget to come down. I am
comeinge home in a month.”
While Winston’s general performance had “improved,” the
number of days he was late
increased to nineteen against four
the previous term.
100 YEARS AGO:
“That made a bad impression”
W
inston had begun to court
the beautiful Clementine
Hozier. The match was by no
means foreordained. In fact, on
the first occasion when Churchill
was in Clementine’s company, he
did not make a good impression. Their first meeting had
occurred at a dance in 1904, where
Churchill lived up to a description
of him by his first love Pamela
Plowden, who said that the first
time you meet him you see all his
faults, but “the rest of your life
you spend in discovering his
virtues.” Winston had noticed
Clementine and asked his mother
Jennie to introduce them. Years
later, Clementine politely recalled
to her son that his father “…just
stared. He never uttered one word
and was very gauche—he never
asked me for a dance, he never
asked me to have supper with
him. I had of course heard a great
deal about him, nothing but ill. I
had been told he was stuck up,
objectionable etc. And on this
occasion he just stood and stared.”
Winston met Clementine
again at a dinner party in March
1908, in his last days at the
Colonial Office. The party was
given by Clementine’s great-aunt
who, while ostensibly asking her
to attend at the last minute
because there were only thirteen
for dinner, was obviously intent
on matchmaking. Churchill was
late as usual and was seated
between Clementine and the guest
of honour, who thought herself an
authority on colonial matters and
had a low opinion of the Undersecretary for the Colonies. Not
1908: Winston and Clementine
surprisingly, Churchill ignored the
guest of honour and devoted all
his attention to Miss Hozier. That Churchill fell in love
with a girl as beautiful and brilliant as Clementine is no surprise.
That he was able to win her love
after not one but two inauspicious
debuts is a testament to the accuracy of Pamela Plowden’s endearing observation.
75 YEARS AGO:
“He thinks England
is going Fascist”
H
itler had been Chancellor of
Germany for less than three
months when, on 23 March, the
Reichstag passed legislation
giving him full dictatorial powers.
Prime Minister Ramsay
MacDonald spoke in the House of
Commons that same day on his
government’s disarmament proposals. Notwithstanding his deep
involvement in foreign affairs
generally and disarmament specifically, including the naval disarmament treaty of 1930, Mr.
MacDonald casually observed that
“I cannot pretend that I went
through the figures myself.”
Winston Churchill immediately rose to his feet and objected
to giving Germany “equality of
status” in the forthcoming disarmament conference and to urging
France to disarm:
…when we watch with surprise and distress the tumultuous insurgence of ferocity
and war spirit, the pitiless illtreatment of minorities, the
denial of the normal protections of civilized society to
large numbers of individuals
solely on the ground of race—
when we see that occurring in
one of the most gifted, learned,
scientific and formidable
nations in the world, one
cannot help feeling glad, that
the fierce passions that are
raging in Germany have not
found, as yet, any other outlet
but upon Germans….As long
as France is strong, and
Germany is but inadequately
armed there is no chance of
France being attacked with
success, and therefore no obligation will arise under
Locarno for us to go to the aid
of France.
Churchill then attacked
Ramsay MacDonald for the
Disarmament Conference in
Geneva, declaring it “a solemn
and prolonged farce” and that
“we have been brought much
nearer to war.” Anthony Eden has
a reputation as one who opposed
appeasement throughout the
1930s. Eventually he did, but not
in 1933. He delivered the government’s rebuttal to Churchill, in the
course of which he said that to
blame MacDonald for the deterioration of international relations
was a “fantastic absurdity.”
On 7 April 1933, Hitler
ended the autonomous status of
the regional German states and
made himself Governor of
Prussia, ousting his vice-chancellor, Franz von Papen. On 13 April,
Jews were banned from national,
local and municipal office.
Churchill spoke the same day in
the House of Commons and once
more attacked MacDonald’s disarmament policy:
The rise of Germany to anything like military equality
with France, or the rise of
Germany or some ally or other
to anything like military equality with France, Poland or the
small states, means a renewal
of a general European war.
What the Prime Minister proposed so recently for the disarmament of Europe seems to
move towards German equality in armaments. He is suspected all over the continent of
wishing to help Germany at
the expense of her neighbours.
The other day he spread on the
table at Geneva a vast plan for
bringing all the armaments
down and thus bringing
Germany much nearer to
equality with her neighbors.
He told us an (extraordinary
admission) that he had not
gone through the figures
himself, but he took responsibility for them. It is a very
grave responsibility. If ever
there was a document upon
which its author should have
consumed his personal
thought and energy it was the
immense disarmament proposal. I doubt very much whether
even the Committee of
Imperial Defence was consulted upon it. We have not been
told whether the heads of all
our fighting services were consulted upon it. Unknown
hands have prepared it and its
author tells us that he has not
mastered it either in its scope
or detail.
Contemporaneously with
Hitler’s early months in office,
Churchill continued to fight a
rear-guard action against the government’s policy of giving dominion status to India. As a consequence, his many enemies in the
Conservative Party attacked his
motives. Samuel Hoare was in the
forefront of those doing so. In one
letter in early April, Hoare wrote:
Winston has convinced himself
that he will smash the
Government sooner or later….I
believe that at the back of his
mind he thinks that he will not
only smash the Government
but that England is going
Fascist and that he, or someone
like him, will eventually be
able to rule India as Mussolini
governs north Africa. I believe
that he is wrong, but no doubt
he sees around him at the
moment a good deal of evidence in the break-up
European governments that
gives colour to his thought.
50 YEARS AGO:
“A medical marvel”
C
hurchill had been invited by
President Eisenhower to visit
the United States in the spring of
1958. He had been ill during
March while in France and his
wife did not want him to go. She
wrote to their daughter Mary:
Papa, for the first time, shows
hesitation about going to
America….Of course—I hope
he won’t go. If he does not
make one or two speeches &
television appearances, the
visit will be a flop as regards
the American People who want
to see and hear him. Then if he
lets himself be persuaded to
make public appearances, it
will half kill him.
Churchill cancelled his trip
and returned to England in April.
His illness returned but he had
recovered by mid-month. Brendan
Bracken wrote to Lord
Beaverbrook on 21 April after he
visited with WSC:
Our friend Winston is, of
course, a medical marvel. He
had disregarded all the normal
life-lengthening rules and has
witnessed, doubtless with
regret, but with some complacence, the burial of most of his
doctors, save Charles. The sun
is Churchill’s greatest lifemaintainer and the lack of it
has probably played some part
in creating his present condition. ✌
We’ll Always Have Boston:
Bill Buckley, Churchillian
RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
BOSTON CHURCHILL CONFERENCE, 1995. Left: WFB with Lady Soames, admiring on her father’s oratory. Right: Harvard’s Steve
Mitby one of six student speakers (see 1994-1995 Proceedings) seeks a Yale man’s autograph. Still with us, Steve is now an
Associate at the Houston law firm Baker Botts, specializing in commercial and intellectual property trial and appellate work.
M
y first encounter with William F. Buckley,
Jr. was as a college senior in 1963. I had
responded to one of his annual appeals,
which subscribers to National Review
expect as part of their reading matter: his
eloquent confession that a journal devoted to capitalism has had, not exactly ipso facto, another losing
year, and cannot continue without the help of its
friends. I said I could not spare a penny to save a
publication I simply couldn’t imagine being
without. (College campuses in those days were
hotbeds of ideas from left to right, not the closed
shops so many of them are today.) “For heaven’s sake don’t apologize,” Bill
Buckley shot back personally, to my surprise and
delight. “It is enough to know you are with us.” Later I had the pleasure to be published twice
in National Review, first with a 1980 story about how
to save the Detroit auto industry. Mr. Buckley sent
another note: “Nice going, hope the President takes
The title (with a nod to “Casablanca”) is from my friend
Judge Douglas Russell, who was with us in Boston in 1995.
it in.” Of course Mr. Reagan was a subscriber, and
he took it in, and the auto industry was saved.
Next I wrote about Latvia, “The Once and Future
Republic,” speculating on a rebirth of Baltic nationhood “in the event of some unforeseen future
breakdown of the Soviet Union.” It isn’t what they
pay at National Review, but the unerring way they
make good your predictions.
And with Bill Buckley I’ve largely been ever
since, always with immense admiration for his
ability with words, which is equally what attracts
so many to Winston Churchill. If Churchill snared
us with what Robert Pilpel called “roast beef and
pewter phrases,” Buckley galvanized us with his
sheer breadth of interest, from Rosalind Tureck’s
Bach recitals to running as a Conservative for
Mayor of New York, from sextant navigation to
skiing the Alps with David Niven, from serving as
a United Nations diplomat to diving two and a half
miles down to visit the Titanic. And he delivered
this fusillade of experience using all the words in
Mr. Webster’s dictionary. He had a Churchillian characteristic rare in
politics today: collegiality toward the opposition. In
1975, when Bill Buckley first sailed the Atlantic, The
New York Times reported that he had arrived in the
Azores “accompanied by John Kenneth Galbraith,
celebrating his retirement from the Harvard
faculty.” Bill immediately wrote to the Times: “The
Galbraith on board was not my friend, the six-foot
11-inch emaciated Menshevik, John Kenneth, but
my friend, the chunky, five-foot 11-inch
Manchesterist, Evan; and anyway, surely it was
Harvard, not Professor Galbraith, that had reason to
celebrate.” John Kenneth Galbraith had meanwhile
written the Times: “William F. Buckley, Jr. was boasting as usual when he told you that I’d sailed to the
Azores as a member of his crew. He is not that
brave; nor, may I say, am I.” Later, Galbraith read
Buckley’s account of the voyage which, he wrote,
“takes me to sea, makes me part of the whole
adventure. Mr. Buckley should give up politics and
concentrate on writing. He cannot afford to have
serious people think he is a failed politician when
he is a master of a higher craft.”
The Churchill Centre’s great trifecta, in 1995,
was bringing William Buckley, Arthur Schlesinger,
Jr. and William Manchester to the same conference
in Boston. Each of them provided us with special
moments. I will never forget Bill Manchester, old
and ailing, astonished and in tears when an audience of 400 rose as one to applaud the author of The
Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; or Arthur
Schlesinger, the great historian, referring to Sir
Winston as “history’s impresario...the largest
human being of our time.” But most of all I remember Bill Buckley’s speech.
He began by recalling his coverage, as editor
of the Yale Daily News, of Churchill’s famous “MidCentury” oration at M.I.T. in 1949. Then he tracked
Churchill’s bittersweet postwar political career. I
thought his speech ordinary at the time, only to
realize later, readying it for publication, how
exquisitely crafted a tribute it was, and how generous to Winston Churchill—for Bill had never really
warmed to Churchill, had called him a “peacetime
catastrophe.” And yet he gave us words that will
live forever in our annals: >>
Five Letters: RML and WFB
A few wisps of correspondence on matters Churchill, which are perhaps more precious to the
editor now that there will be no more. Readers will be amused to note the relative economy of words
by WFB compared to the waterfall of words by... RML
“
December 1995
A hasty note, which however you won’t get for awhile since I’m at the sea, but its
purpose is to thank you for your extraordinary courtesies at Boston. You could not have
been more thoughtful, kinder, more generous, and if I performed anything for you or Mr.
Churchill, that’s only a poor contribution in an attempt at requital. Warmest, Bill
June 1996
Can you tell me the term for the debate strategy in which the debater muddies up the waters with
a side issue while avoiding the main issue, on which he is on weak ground? As Andrew Roberts
reports in our next issue, David Irving’s second Churchill volume claims that the present Queen
Mother supported Hitler’s “peace offer” in June 1940 and that the proof is to be found in Box Number
23 of Lord Monkton’s papers at the Bodleian. But the Bodleian says Irving has never seen the box, let
alone opened it—which obfuscates the simple fact that the Queen Mum, like most of the
Establishment, had no initial confidence in Churchill; so it’s not exactly earthshaking that she once
entertained the notion of “scuttling,” as Churchill put it. Thus, whatever the Queen Mother thought is
inconsequential; and whatever is in the mysterious box can hardly be profound.
I have taken National Review Online to task for a statement that Churchill let Coventry burn in
1940 rather than reveal his access to the “Ultra” decrypts. If you’ve not read this, see Peter McIver,
“Winston Churchill and the Bombing of Coventry” on our website. Regards, Richard
“
Glad to have that Coventry story, nicely handled by Mr. McIver. The first part of your
query suggests we’re talking about ignoratio elenchi, refuting a different point while ignoring the primary point. Does that do it? Advise. XX WFB.
continued >>
BILL BUCKLEY, CHURCHILLIAN...
Mr. Churchill had struggled to diminish totalitarian rule in Europe which, however,
increased. He fought to save the Empire, which
dissolved. He fought socialism, which prevailed. He struggled to defeat Hitler, and he
won. It is not, I think, the significance of that
victory, mighty and glorious though it was, that
causes the name of Churchill to make the blood
run a little faster....it is the roar that we hear,
when we pronounce his name. It is simply mistaken that battles are necessarily more important than the words that summon men to arms.
The battle of Agincourt was long forgotten as a
geopolitical event, but the words of Henry V,
with Shakespeare to recall them, are imperishable in the mind, even as which side won the
battle of Gettysburg will dim from the memory
of those who will never forget the words
spoken about that battle by Abraham Lincoln.
The genius of Churchill was his union of affinities of the heart and of the mind, the total fusion
of animal and spiritual energy....It is my proposal that Winston Churchill’s words were
indispensable to the benediction of that hour,
which we hail here tonight, as we hail the
memory of the man who spoke them; as we
come together, to praise a famous man.
Above all, he was so nice! Riding to the hotel, I
asked if there was any Churchill fact he needed that
might have eluded him. “Ah, do you know when he
was born?” Bill winked. After his speech we fired
“
questions, as at National Press Club luncheons: “If
you could have Churchill to yourself for an evening,
what would you say to him?” WFB replied: “I
would say, ‘Please talk non-stop.’” We come together to praise a famous man,
each from our station, each with our memories.
Thanks to Bill Buckley, I got into my bones the
essential structure of a fund appeal; I’ve lost track
of the times I’ve used his National Review subscription tally: “the combined circulation of Finest Hour
and the Reader’s Digest is twenty million copies.”
Thanks to him, I ventured beyond lake sailing into
the Atlantic. Thanks to him, I know what Che
Guevara, Barry Goldwater and Whittaker
Chambers were really like. Thanks to him, I know
how to essay an obituary, for his touch on these was
a model. Thanks to him I developed an appreciation for Bach, especially on a harpsichord. Thanks
to him, and Sir Winston, I’ve seen the heights to
which the English language can rise. Thanks to him,
I know what I owe my country. “For every thing there is a season.” Among his
friends there seemed a resignation that it was time
for him to go. Just weeks ago he penned his
farewell to his best friend, Evan Galbraith; last year
he mourned the loss of his wife, wondering what
was left that made life worth living. Bill married his
wife Pat the same day in 1950 that Elizabeth Taylor
married the first of eight husbands. He was always
proud of that. Five Letters continued...
October 1999
A Churchill Centre member and mutual friend of ours writes angrily over your 24
September column, saying your view of World War II is “intellectually and viscerally very
close to Pat Buchanan’s.” Why, he says, you’ve written that “if Hitler had got to Moscow it
might have been better for us.” I replied that (a) you didn’t say that and (b) I don’t find legitimate speculation about alternate outcomes of the war outrageous.
But my quibble is with your statement that, had Hitler conquered Moscow, things “could have
been worse.” Surely, in an all-out battle between Hitler and Stalin, absent Britain and America, Hitler
would have won. Maybe not in 1942, but eventually. That would be good? With the Anglo-Americans
neutralized or uninvolved, and with the resources of the Caucasus and Ukraine—which, remember,
Hitler didn’t lose immediately after Stalingrad—would we not have faced a Nazified Europe and a
nuclear Third Reich? Hitler wasn’t that far away from the bomb, and his rocket scientists were working
on means to deliver it. We saw what the V-2 did to London, even in his final months.
A friendly academic wrote me recently: “Personally I get a little bored repeatedly recording this,
but there’s something wrong with the notion that if Hitler had been free to concentrate on Stalin, both
of them would have wound up dead.” —Kindest, RML
“
My thought has always been that Nazism had absolutely no eschatology, and would
wither on the vine. Only the life of Hitler kept it going, and I can’t imagine he’d have lasted
very long. The Communists hung in there for forty-six years. —Warmest ever, WFB
RIDDLES, MYSTERIES, ENIGMAS
Did FDR call him a “stinker”?
Q : What is the source of Roosevelt’s description of his first
meeting with Churchill, in July 1918 at Gray’s Inn, when he thought
him a show-off and a “stinker”? —Andrew Roberts
A
The source is Joseph P.
xKennedy’s papers. Kennedy
wrote that FDR complained that
Churchill “acted like a
stinker...lording it all over us....”
My Roosevelt and Churchill: The
Complete Correspondence (1984, vol.
II, 355), quotes the “stinker” remark
from Michael Beschloss, Kennedy
and Roosevelt (1980, 200, 230).
Beschloss had special access to the
Joseph Kennedy papers, and seems
the first to publish the “stinker”
remark. Daun van Ee (Library of
Congress) reports a slightly different version in Amanda Smith, ed.,
Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of
Joseph P. Kennedy (2001, 411): A
diary entry for 28 March 1940
quotes FDR as saying: “‘I always
disliked him [Churchill] since the
time I went to England in 1917 or
1918. At a dinner I attended he
acted like a stinker.” Smith’s
“editor’s note” (xxxiv) mentions
various versions of her source texts,
but gives no indication that this
text was altered.
Is Kennedy’s recollection
plausible? Would Roosevelt have
used the word “stinker”? Yes. It
sounds like him. He seems to have
sunk to today’s level of four letter
words only rarely. (His mother, a
formidable woman, surely forbade
vulgar language.) He threw out
the occasional “damn,” and used
“son of a bitch” at least once in,
ironically, a reference to Joe
Kennedy! (As in, to Eleanor
Roosevelt, “I never want to see that
son of a bitch again...”—also taken
from Beschloss.)
—WARREN F. KIMBALL
Q
Atlantic Star
I am at a loss as to why
xChurchill did not receive the
Atlantic Star. From my research of
details of the award of the war
service medals and campaign
medals for World War II, and the
qualifications required, it would
appear that the length of time Sir
Winston spent on Royal Navy battleships when he crossed the
Atlantic, or flew back across the
Atlantic battle zone, he would have
qualified for the medal in question. —REGINALD G. BEINT
A
The Atlantic Star was awarded
xin the Royal Navy for six
months’ service afloat in the
Atlantic or home waters between 3
September 1939 and 8 May 1945,
and to personnel employed in
convoys to North Russia and the
South Atlantic. Personnel must first
have qualified for the 1939-1945
Star, with the qualifying time for
this not counting toward the
Atlantic Star. The same requirements applied to the Merchant
Navy. There were separate requirements for RAF air crew and Army
gunners who served afloat, which
would not apply to Churchill.
Winston Churchill did not meet
these requirements. One further comment by Paul
Courtenay: One could not have
both the Atlantic and the France
and Germany Stars; it was one or
the other. If you qualified for both,
you were given the one you earned
first, to which was attached a clasp
for the second award stating
“Atlantic” or “France and
Germany,” denoting the entitlement which did not bring you a
further star; when the medal itself
was not worn, the clasp was represented by a rosette on the ribbon.
Had WSC qualified for the Atlantic
Star, he would have earned a clasp,
but not an extra medal.
—DOUGLAS S. RUSSELL (AUTHOR OF
THE ORDERS, DECORATIONS AND MEDALS
OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL)
Send your questions to the
Army Terminology
Q
Please explain the
xdifferences in the
British army terms “commissioned, seconded,
gazetted,” which are often
applied to Churchill
without explanation.
A
An officer is commissioned
into a particular regiment or
corps; this is a formal status,
accompanied by a document
signed by the Queen (in facsimile
these days). So you don’t receive a
fresh commission every time you
are posted from A to B. Receipt of a
commission is published in the
London Gazette, hence “gazetted.”
Once you have your commission, you are frequently sent to jobs
outside your regiment (perhaps to
a headquarters staff or a training
depot as an instructor or to a specialisation, e.g., linguist, parachutist, military attaché, etc.). You
remain a member of your own regiment or corps and receive a posting
to and from your assignment.
Sometimes you volunteer (or
are invited) to fill a vacancy in
another similar regiment; in this
case you would be attached (sometimes called “seconded”) for a temporary period. Sometimes this
might become permanent—if it
suits all three parties—in which
case your transfer would be
gazetted. —PHC
Q
Never Despair
Recently without warning, I
was slandered by a colleague
who then resigned, denouncing all
of us and leaving a mess for his
successors to clean up. Can you
please recommend the most appropriate Churchill quotation for such
a situation.
A
“The spectacle of a number of
middle-aged gentlemen who
are my political opponents being in
a state of uproar and fury is really
quite exhilarating to me.”
—HOUSE OF COMMONS, 21 MAY 1952 ✌
Present at the Creation:
Danny Mander Guarding
the P.M. at Teheran, 1942-43
At the 2006 Churchill Conference, an
engaging Lancashire man held the
audience spellbound recounting his
20a
RNC
experiences with the Military Police in
Teheran in 1942-43, where he twice
guarded Churchill—the second time at
the critical conference which began to
create the postwar world.
AN INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN KIDDER
D
MILITARY POLICE AT TEHERAN, 1943: Lance Corporals Crabb
and Oakenful; Sergeant Mander; Lance Corporals Peugh and Nortley.
anny Mander was born in Lancashire
to a Scottish mother and English
father in 1917, and after school became a
Susan Kidder: How did you get to Teheran?
journeyman engraver. In 1939 he volunteered for the Military Police, and attended
Danny Mander: In June 1942 I was posted to
the Police College in March 1940. He was disTeheran to ferret out German spies. With Iranian
charged in April 1946 and later emigrated to the
agreement, German “occupational plants” had been
United States. Now 91, Danny is an active real estate
sent there in 1937-38, hoping to be absorbed into the
broker in California, where he is regularly taken for
Iranian community by the time Hitler got through
thirty years younger. He is living testimony to the
Russia, easing his access to Iranian oil fields. As
late Alistair Cooke’s vow that he would never retire,
managers of newspapers, railways, local industry,
“because I’ve observed that my friends who retire
even the branch of a police station, they were experts
immediately keel over.” Danny and his wife
in their fields and had learned the language well.
Heather live in Sacramento.
Fortunately, our own secret branch of the Intelligence
True to history, Danny has recorded his recolCorps, the Field Security Police, were nondescript
lections on a CD, and has made plans to publish a
types who merged into the community and were
small book. The CD is available for US$20 in USA
quickly able to identify the culprits. One by one they
and US$24.95 elsewhere, plus US$5 shipping anywere arrested at pistol point, and taken to a wing of
where by airmail. Credit card orders can be made on
an Iranian jail allotted to us for our questioning. We
www. mmpublishing.com or send check or money
treated them humanely but questioned them closely,
order (US$ only) to MM Publishing, PO Box 791,
and when we had learned enough we put them on a
Aromas California 95004.
train to Basra, Iraq. From here they were sent by boat
to India for safekeeping until the end of the war.
Taking our prisoners to the railway station was
Susan Kidder is a recent transplant from New England to
Wisconsin, and founder of the Winston Churchill book group
the most dangerous time. “Relatives” would appear
of Wisconsin. WSC was Susan’s inspiration since middle
to bid them good-bye, trying to pass them guns,
school years: “I learned the power of the spoken word, which
knives and cut-throat type razors....It was hazardous
I used to disarm my verbal tormenters!”
work, and the only advice we had was to be careful.
21a
R,
crop slightly at
top to kill white
spot over his
head
CRUISING SPEED: Danny and Heather Mander at the Canadian
Legion Vimy Ridge dinner, San Francisco, April 2006.
Their fate in India was far better than Allied soldiers
in German camps. I always found Indian Army soldiers to be friendly and hospitable. But without the
Field Security Police of the British army, we could
never have achieved such intelligence success—and
it was all done without a shot being fired. SK: Were these agents dedicated Nazis?
DM: Hard to tell. There were no Nazi salutes
or Heil Hitlers. They were clearly middle class and
well educated. Had Hitler won, they would have
enjoyed a comfortable life with more freedom than
in Germany. They had come to Iran with few
regrets, and as the war progressed I am sure they
felt they had chosen right. They behaved well under
the circumstances, not like desperately oppressed
people, and not like dedicated Nazis.
SK: Your next job, I gather from your tapes,
was creating a route between Teheran and Sheba, 30
miles northwest of Basra, as a supply route to
Russia—part of Lend-Lease aid to the Soviets. This
was all behind-the-scenes work, very important but
sometimes missed in the history books.
DM: You would be amazed at what LendLease entailed that the American public never knew
about. I set off with three other policemen, a Jeep
and a pick-up truck, bedding in a tent so as not to
waste any time packing and and repacking. Experts
from the Royal Engineers rode with us, checking
every bridge over the dried-up stream beds (which
became raging torrents in the wet season). My job
was to read the poor quality maps and try to keep
us on the dirt and gravel roads. We went from sea
level to three or four thousand feet, where there was
snow; then down to the terrific heat of the sandy
plains, then up to the 3000-foot Teheran plateau.
I could not remember how long it took to do
this survey—until the time I saw convoys traveling
this route to Russia after I had been moved from
Teheran to Ahwaz in early 1944. This was a forsaken
place on the River Karun, which empties into the
Persian Gulf—hot and filthy, with lots of malaria.
We took precautions against malaria, but we caught
sandfly fever instead.
At Ahwaz I finally saw the results of my
outing with the Royal Engineers. Convoys were
rolling from Basra with cargoes from America,
Britain and Canada, where we’d put them on trains
for Teheran. The railway was built before the war by
a consortium of British, Dutch and German engineers; it winds up and around huge mountains, and
on the top you can look back and see six or seven
stations in the distance. There are also scores of
tunnels. I’d never heard of this monumental undertaking until I saw it. Its builders were proud of it, as
they had a right to be. Moving military material to Russia was a phenomenal achievement. Americans never knew the
extent of Lend-Lease—and it was all for free. I am
sure the Russians never paid a bean, although I read
not too long ago that Britain paid off its last LendLease loans to the United States in 2006.
My job in Ahwaz was to administer security
checkpoints. In August 1942, I was ordered to organize security for an upscale conference of “senior officials”—British American, Russian and Iranian. By
now, Iran had decided to ditch Germany and to be
on our side. This showpiece meeting was at an old
chateau on large grounds, the like of which I hadn’t
known existed in Ahwaz. It was like a king’s palace.
The participants assembled. As each general
stepped out of his car he was given a raffle-type
ticket to reclaim it. He would then walk into the
garden, where he was smartly saluted by three lance
corporals (British, Russian, American), with fixed
bayonets. Farther on he was saluted by three corporals, then three sergeants. As they dined, it was
interesting to see the British and Americans stack
their arms in a corner, while the Russians sat with
their rifles between their knees!
Making conversation, I asked what happened
to the Lend-Lease Studebaker trucks, laden with
arms and medical supplies, that we had sent on the
railway cars to Russia. The Russians replied that
they were in storage. So I asked, “Why aren’t they
being used?” They replied: “We are saving them to
fight the Americans.” Quite a straight answer—and
with venom to go with it. >>
PRESENT AT THE CREATION...
SK: In August 1942 you first encountered
Churchill, who flew in from Cairo, where he had
just installed Alexander and Montgomery in the
Middle East Command. How did you come to be
assigned?
DM: I was thoroughly vetted. A sergeant-major
cross-examined me on everything: schooldays, religion, church attendance, first job, social activities,
sports (football, cricket, running). Was I a nonsmoker and non-drinker? Yes. “Right,” he said,
“report at 5AM tomorrow morning, and bring a
comrade you can trust.” I chose Charlie Oakenful.
The next morning we drove out to a disused
airfield named “Qualy Morguey” (area of wild
rabbits). Other cars began to arrive, loaded with
foreigners: Russians, Persian generals, American
brass. We had no inkling of what was about to take
place.
Sometime after 6 am an American plane the
size of a jet liner touched down and taxied to where
we were all assembled. A side door opened and a
rather rotund figure appeared, wearing a siren suit
and a large cigar. There was no doubt who he was. The brass made a receiving line and Winston
Churchill was introduced to each “victim.” Charlie
and I were at the end, and realized we were not part
of the “high echelon.” So, as he got to me, I stepped
out of line, saluted him (which he returned) and
opened the car door for him to enter. He smiled and
muttered, “Thank-you, corporal.” We were off and
running on a “harmonious friendship”!
At the British Legation in Teheran, the kitchen
staff had breakfast ready, despite the early hour.
Charlie and I took turns walking around the building, mainly guarding the rear access. I called for
more help at the front, where locals were gathering,
realizing something was up; it would have been
easy for a terrorist to mix with them and get inside. I
will never forget the “breakfast dessert,” which we
shared: peaches with their stones removed, filled
with liquid chocolate, cream on top, and the slice
preciously cut replaced at jaunty angle in the cream.
Having spent two years in the UK when no fruit
was imported, it was wonderful to see such luscious
peaches. They tasted as good as they looked.
I was asked to command a motorcycle escort
for the embassy limousine which would take
Churchill to the Shah’s summer residence at
Shimran for lunch. From here we went to the
summer residence of the British Minister, where the
Prime Minister decided to take a swim in the pool
and a walk around the gardens. I followed closely,
trying to answer his avid questions about plants and
22A
RMC
COMEDY AT
TEHERAN, 1943:
Sergeant Major
Bancroft (left) and
Sergeant Mander
(right) are “taking
into custody” a
“drunk” personified by the Army
photographer at
the Teheran
Conference. There
was certainly
plenty of drink
available for the
key figures, but
Danny noticed
that Stalin
remained firmly
sober, and
Churchill was
only somewhat
tottery on one
occasion after a
long dinner with
the Russians.
flowers. Mr. Churchill always noticed and talked to
people allocated to serve and guard him. Jokingly,
he invited me to join him in the pool. Of course he
knew that as a bodyguard I could not do so, and he
laughed when I had to refuse. In short, he behaved
as a normal person—not at all stand-offish.
Rather than return to Teheran, the Prime
Minister decided to stay overnight at this cooler altitude, so Charlie and I were on continual duty all
night long. The next morning, astride the motorcycles again, we escorted the PM to the “airport,” and
he flew off to visit Stalin in Moscow.
SK: What were your impressions of the “Big
Three” at the November 1943 “summit conference”? DM: It was a fraught time for Churchill, and
he dictated to stenographers non-stop when returning to his room after a session with Stalin and
Roosevelt. This I admired, for he always returned
fresh as a daisy inside and out, ready to face another
grueling meeting. It is a lesson anyone in such an
important position should learn. He never went to a social event without emptying his mind of all that had transpired at the
plenary sessions beforehand. This also impressed
me. It made such a difference to his attitude as he
went off to his next meeting, usually of a very different calibre to the last. How wonderful he must have
felt to be fresh every time in mind and spirit. It was
a great trait.
When we took Churchill to the Russian
Embassy, the OGPU (Soviet secret police) were
trying to hide behind every tree on the great lawn.
It seemed very silly, because we all could see them.
It was very different from the security we were
trained to provide. We never used large numbers of
men; but we placed them far more strategically.
The only time I saw the PM the worse for
alcohol was when I helped him walk back to our
legation after one of those long dinners with the
Russians. It was a fine, clear night and he and Eden
chose to walk rather than ride in the limousine.
They were still on their feet—just. I put my arm
within his to hold him steady and had a corporal do
the same for Mr. Eden. Thus they continued straight
and upright to the British consulate, talking together
(but not carousing!) in proper British fashion.
November 30th was Churchill’s 69th birthday
and his turn to host dinner at the British Legation.
The Russians were uncooperative on security and
trusted no one. The Americans were the opposite,
entrusting Roosevelt to our own police. Roosevelt could not use the stone steps at the
front door, so carpenters had made a ramp up to the
rear kitchen door, which was situated along a
narrow alley. His car drove up, and his driver pulled
a folding wheelchair from the boot. As he unfolded
it I lifted FDR from his car into the chair. I was
impressed by his size, his large head and massive
chest. From the waist up he was a great looking
man, but his buttocks and legs were wasted away
from polio. As he was being pushed up the ramp to
the kitchen door, Churchill welcomed him inside.
Stalin was a different kettle of fish. He drank
multiple toasts but with very small glasses, and
always remained firmly sober. I remember him
arriving at the circular drive around a lily pond at
the bottom of the Legation steps. A corporal who
sprang to open the car door for him had to use two
hands: It contained heavy panels of bullet-proof
steel. As Stalin stepped out, a surge of Russian officers from the cars following behind rushed up to
enclose him totally, so no one else could get near. It
was all done quickly. I remarked at the time that the
only person who could put a knife in Stalin’s back
were his own officers.
SK: How did you save Marshal Voroshilov?
DM: The Stalingrad Sword, which the British
made to present to the Russians, was on display at
our legation. Stalin said Voroshilov had earned this
trophy, so the Marshal decided to visit us to familiarize himself with it before presentation. He wanted
to read the inscriptions, which were in English on
one side of the blade and Russian on the other. As Voroshilov arrived, cars shuttling to and
from the American Embassy were sweeping through
our gate without stopping to make it difficult for
any hidden sniper. Voroshilov, already inside, was
walking up the drive, which had a hedge on either
side. I called to him to get out of the way, but he
didn’t understand English and strolled on as if deaf!
With a convoy approaching at high speed, I
took immediate action. Running across a strip of
lawn, I jumped the hedge, grabbed him around the
waist like a Rugby tackler, and bowled him over the
hedge just as the motorized convoy whizzed past.
He was completely stunned as we got up and
brushed off bits of grass. I tried to apologize, but he
realized I had taken him out of mortal danger, and
tried to say thanks. A legation staffer later told me
he had come inside very shaken, asking for water
and a chair to sit on. Hopefully he said his prayers
to whatever deity Communists still prayed to. SK: What was your relation with DetectiveSergeant Thompson, Churchill’s bodyguard?
DM: When I learned that a film was being
made about him I wrote to the BBC offering information about the Teheran Conference, but I never
heard from anyone. I liked Thompson and got on
well with him on Churchill’s visits. We talked a lot,
and I gave him the benefit of my local knowledge.
Walter always made the decision as to where in
a car Churchill would sit, and he was the man in the
PM’s room. Legation security was left to the
Military Police, helped by infantry guards inside
and outside the walls. The units chosen were ones
Churchill had been associated with in his early military life. I was never regarded as working for Walter
Thompson; my job was security as a whole.
Wherever the PM landed was the jurisdiction of the
British military, and Walter was off-duty except
within the quarters where Churchill slept.
I have been a regular member of the Churchill
Centre for many years, and have visited Blenheim
Palace and Bladon churchyard in England. When we
were in the church no one else was there, and my
wife Heather asked me to play “Amazing Grace” on
the organ. No way, I replied, Sir Winston’s favorite
was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I played at
full blast. We were both thrilled to hear it in his own
backyard. I trust he heard it loud and clear.
I have ad-libbed these words, not referring to
my CD or my notes. It certainly brings back many
memories of those years. The magnitude of it all
was and still is in my mind astonishing. I can hardly
believe it ever happened. ✌
THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1)
Lion of Britain, Cross of Lorraine:
Churchill and de Gaulle
“THE CROSS OF LORRAINE IS PART OF THE HERALDIC ARMS OF LORRAINE IN EASTERN
FRANCE. IT WAS ORIGINALLY HELD TO BE A SYMBOL OF JOAN OF ARC, RENOWNED FOR
HER PERSEVERANCE AGAINST FOREIGN INVADERS (IN HER CASE,THE ENGLISH)....DURING
WORLD WAR II, THE CROSS WAS ADOPTED AS THE OFFICIAL SYMBOL OF THE FREE
FRENCH FORCES UNDER GENERAL CHARLES DE GAULLE.” —WIKIPEDIA
TERRY REARDON
C
harles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was
born on 22 November 1890 in Lille,
France. He graduated from the French
military academy in 1912, was wounded
three times in World War I, and spent
thirty months as a prisoner of war, making repeated
but unsuccessful escape attempts.
The interwar years saw de Gaulle make
rapid strides in the army thanks to a mentor,
Marshal Philippe Pétain, head of the French army.
Pétain brought de Gaulle into his inner circle in
1925 and after two years as a battalion commander
de Gaulle was promoted to the secretariat of the
Council Superior of National Defence, where he
was involved in a planning capacity from 1932 to
1937. His criticisms of the Army’s lack of new ideas,
such as tank brigades, were frostily received by the
High Command, which was committed to the illusory and incomplete Maginot Line.1
One high-profile member of the French
Parliament, Paul Reynaud, agreed with de Gaulle’s
concerns, and de Gaulle bombarded him with sixtytwo letters over the next four years. Reynaud
became Prime Minister in March 1940, and in May
promoted Major de Gaulle to temporary General,
commanding a tank division. Summoned back to
Paris, he was given the position of Under Secretary
of State, over the objections of Pétain and French
Army head General Maxime Weygand.2
On 9 June 1940, with France reeling under
the German assault, Reynaud sent de Gaulle to
London to request more assistance from the British
Air Force. Of his first meeting with Churchill at
Downing Street de Gaulle later wrote: “Mr.
In honor of our first Churchill Symposium in France
(“Churchill and France,” 6-7 June 2008), Finest Hour is
pleased to offer two articles on the topic, the first being an
overview by FH contributor Terry Reardon of ICS Canada.
Churchill seemed to me to be equal to the rudest
task, provided it also had grandeur....The humour,
too, with which he seasoned his acts and words,
and the way in which he made use, now of graciousness, now of anger, contributed to make one
feel what mastery he had of the terrible game in
which he was engaged.”3
On 16 June, accompanied by de Gaulle,
France’s war production liaison in London, Jean
Monnet, implored Churchill to expend all his
remaining air squadrons in the battle of France.
Churchill wrote later: “I told him there was no possibility of this being done....My two French visitors
then got up and moved towards the door, Monnet
leading. As they reached it, de Gaulle, who had
hitherto scarcely uttered a single word, turned back,
and, taking two or three paces towards me, said in
English: ‘I think you are quite right.’”4
Churchill flew to France four times in May
and June, trying to bolster the French leadership.
De Gaulle supported the British War Cabinet’s offer
of “indissoluble union” between the two nations,
transmitted to Reynaud on 16 June, together with
Churchill’s proposal to meet Reynaud in Brittany
the next day. But the French Council, led by
Weygand and Pétain, was hostile to the proposal,
saying that “in three weeks England will have her
neck rung like a chicken.” A union with Britain,
Pétain added, would be “fusion with a corpse.”5
With the collapse of France, and the formation of a quiescent if not collaborationist government at Vichy, the only member of the Government
who decided to carry on the fight from England,
who thus became the spokesman for free France,
was Charles de Gaulle.
In mid-June de Gaulle obtained Churchill’s
permission to use the BBC to broadcast an appeal of
resistance to his countrymen. “France does not
stand alone,” he said. “Behind her is a vast empire
and she can make common cause with the British
great nations, remain bound to one another. They
Empire which commands the seas and is continuing
will either go down both together or both together
the struggle....The flame of French resistance must
they will win.”8
6
On 24 August 1940 Churchill spoke in the
not and shall not die.”
Reynaud had now resigned and his succesHouse of Commons “Our old comradeship with
sor Pétain sought an armistice with Hitler, whose
France is not at an end. In General de Gaulle and
terms prescribed that the French Fleet “shall be colhis gallant band that comradeship takes an effective
lected in ports to be
form. These Free
specified and there
Frenchmen have
demobilised and disbeen condemned to
armed under
death by Vichy, but
German or Italian
the day will come,
control.” Although
as surely as the sun
the German governwill rise tomorrow,
ment had solemnly
when their names
declared that it had
will be held in
no intention of using
honour, and their
the French fleet, this
names will be
was not believed by
graven in stones in
the British War
the streets and vilCabinet. Thus the
lages of a France
Cabinet took in
restored in a liberatChurchill’s words “a
ed Europe, to its full
hateful decision, the
freedom and its
most unnatural and
ancient fame.”9
Dakar, the
painful in which I
capital of the French
have ever been concolony of Senegal,
cerned....But no act
was controlled by
was ever more necVichy, and Churchill
essary for the life of
pressured the British
Britain and for all
Chiefs of Staff to
that depended upon
mount an operation
it.”7 The British
action on 3 July
with the Free French
focused on the
to take the port,
STUDY IN CONTRAST: De Gaulle and Churchill at Casablanca in
French fleet in Merswhich would be
January 1943. The Prime Minister, who always believed in a smiling
el-Kebir and Oran in
useful as a base in
countenance “when one is about to encounter the unknown,” is his
usual ebullient self. For the reason why General de Gaulle looks like he
North Africa. the battle of the
is experiencing a bad case of constipation, please see page 27.
The French
Atlantic. The attack,
fleet was given
between 23 and 25
several options: joining the British fleet in the war,
September 1940, was a disaster, with Vichy forces
mounting a strong defence. Vichy and German
sailing to a French port such as Martinique for
propaganda took advantage of their victory, and the
demilitarization, or scuttling. With no satisfactory
British and American press were also highly
response, the Royal Navy commenced hostilities
critical.10
and the bulk of the fleet was sunk or disabled.
While Dakar did not diminish Churchill’s
De Gaulle was not informed of the action
confidence in de Gaulle, their relationship rapidly
until it had commenced and his initial reaction was
deteriorated. Although in late 1940 de Gaulle’s
anger, but when General Spears, British Liaison
forces consisted of an army of 140 officers and 2109
Officer to the former French government, met with
men, and a navy of 120 officers and 1746 ratings,
him two days later, he found de Gaulle “astonishhis attitude and deportment were those of a major
ingly objective.” On 8 July de Gaulle broadcast to
player in the war.11
France: “…the government at Bordeaux had agreed
In November 1940, without advising
to place our ships at the enemy’s discretion....one
Churchill or the British Government, de Gaulle
day the enemy would have used them against
announced an Empire Defence Council, with the
England or against our own empire. Well, I say
wording of the manifesto reading like a declaration
without hesitation that it is better they should have
of war on Vichy. He included an unrealistic and >> been destroyed....Our two ancient nations, our two
CHURCHILL AND DE GAULLE...
arrogant offer to the United States of air and naval
bases in the French possessions of the Western
hemisphere, which were administered by Vichy.12
The next few months saw many incidents of
anti-British actions and comments by de Gaulle, but
in June 1941 came a serious disruption. Two countries in the Levant, Syria and Lebanon, had been
mandated to France after World War I, and after the
armistice were governed by Vichy. In June 1941 an
allied force of mainly Free French troops commenced an offensive, and in July Vichy asked for a
cease-fire and an armistice. De Gaulle laid down his
conditions, but these were ignored by the British,
and the Free French were not permitted to have any
contact with the Vichy forces, which were granted
“full honours of war.”13
Beside himself with rage, de Gaulle vented
his anger on General Spears and the British
Minister of State in the Middle East, Oliver
Lyttelton, who in his memoirs admitted that the
Free French should have been consulted. Lyttelton
wired Churchill that “de Gaulle worked himself
into a state of bitter hostility to everything English”
and “was rude and offensive.”14
Churchill replied: “I am sorry you are
having all this trouble with de Gaulle....It might be
well if you could let him see the gulf on the edge of
which he is disporting himself.” Churchill also
telegraphed de Gaulle suggesting he return to
England “in order that I may discuss with you personally the difficulties which have arisen.”
De Gaulle ignored the suggestion. When on
27 August 1941 a reporter for the Chicago Daily
News asked him why Britain had not formally recognized the Free French as a government-in-exile,
he replied: “England is carrying on a wartime deal
with Hitler in which Vichy serves as a go-between.
Vichy serves Hitler by keeping the French people in
subjection and selling the French Empire piecemeal
to Germany....Britain is exploiting Vichy in the same
way as Germany; the only difference is in her purposes. What happens in effect is an exchange of
advantages between hostile powers which keeps
the Vichy Government alive as long as both Britain
and Germany agree it should exist.”15
Realizing he had gone too far, de Gaulle
tried to stop the publication, and after this failed,
claimed he had been misinterpreted. He finally
returned to London on 1 September; but the day
before, Churchill had issued a directive that no
person in authority was to see him, and that “he is
to stew in his own juice.”
On 12 September de Gaulle met with
Churchill, who was determined to put him in his
place. Churchill informed his private secretary, John
Colville, that he would speak only through an inter-
preter (see James Lancaster’s following article). “An hour slipped away and I began to fear
violence,” Colville wrote. “I had decided it was my
duty to burst in, perhaps with a bogus message….I
went in to find the two of them sitting side by side
with amiable expressions on their faces. De Gaulle,
no doubt for tactical purposes, was smoking one of
the Prime Minister’s cigars....The Entente was
Cordiale again, at least temporarily.”16
On 7 December 1941 the United States
entered the war. Roosevelt had been supportive of
Vichy and Marshal Pétain, and negative toward the
Free French, especially its erratic and explosive
leader. The invasion of the islands of St. Pierre and
Miquelon on 24 December 1941 (FH 136: 18-22)
reinforced the U.S. government’s disdain for de
Gaulle, which continued throughout the war.
In 1942 things didn’t get any better. In May,
British forces landed on the Vichy-controlled island
of Madagascar without Free French participation or
any warning to de Gaulle. The general, again
furious, cabled his commanders in Africa and the
Levant, stating that they must have no relations
with the invaders.17 De Gaulle backed off after
another meeting with Churchill, but he was soon
again to be out of step with “Les Anglo-Saxons.”
“Torch,” the invasion of North Africa, was
set to commence in November 1942. Churchill had
written to Roosevelt stating his intention to advise
de Gaulle the day before the landing; but Roosevelt
demanded that he not be told until after a successful landing. When eventually informed, de Gaulle
roared: “I hope the Vichy people will fling them
into the sea! You don’t get France by burglary!”18
Again, however, de Gaulle calmed down,
and at lunch at Chequers that same day he politely
listened while Churchill explained the reasons for
the secrecy. But de Gaulle interpreted this as stemming from the pro-Vichy American stance.
De Gaulle further entrenched the American
negative opinion when he refused to fly to
Casablanca in January 1943 to discuss power
sharing with French General Henri Giraud, who
had recently escaped from a German prison. His
attitude was that this was purely a French affair.
The Americans, of course, were certain that
Giraud was a better bet than de Gaulle, but with
Churchill expressing the opposite opinion, they
agreed to a sharing of power. Roosevelt cabled
WSC: “We’ll call Giraud the bridegroom, and I’ll
produce him from Algiers, and you have the bride,
de Gaulle, down from London, and we’ll have a
shotgun wedding.”19
The President, somewhat perversely enjoying Churchill’s discomfort, cabled to Secretary of
State Cordell Hull: “We delivered our bridegroom,
General Giraud, who was most cooperative on the
impending marriage, and I am sure was ready to go
reached between de Gaulle and Giraud, although
soon after de Gaulle was able to manoeuvre his
through with it on our terms. However our friends
could not produce the bride, the temperamental
rival out of the joint leadership. Harold Macmillan,
Allied Minister in North Africa and a future prime
Lady de Gaulle.”20
Ultimately, under pressure from his Free
minister, recalled a 3 1/2 hours drive with de
French National Committee, de Gaulle relented and
Gaulle to the Algerian seaside on 14 June 1943, and
arrived in Casablanca on 22 January; he and Giraud
bathing naked with de Gaulle sitting “in a dignified
could not agree, but they did issue a statement on
manner on a rock, with his military cap, his
their mutual objective: the liberation of France.21 De
uniform and his belt...It is very difficult to know
Gaulle’s stubbornness left Churchill “in a white
how to handle him....I’m afraid he will always be
fury” according to Robert Murphy, American repredifficult to work with. He is by nature an autocrat.
sentative in Algiers. However, at the request of
Just like Louis X1V or Napoleon. He thinks in his
Roosevelt, de Gaulle did agree to shake hands with
heart that he should command and all others
Giraud for the
should obey him. It is
benefit of the camnot exactly ‘Fascist’
eramen, and the
(an overworked
photographs
word), it is authoritarreceived a wide
ian.”26
22
The anglophobic
circulation.
When
actions of de Gaulle
Churchill and de
continued, although
Gaulle arrived
these did not reflect
back in England,
his respect and admiChurchill gave
ration for Churchill,
orders that “the
and some light
monster of
moments were
Hampstead”
recorded. On 13
(where de Gaulle
January 1944
lived) was not to
Churchill and de
be allowed to leave
Gaulle lunched in
the country and
Marrakesh, with
THE LARGER PICTURE: Roosevelt cabled Churchill to bring de Gaulle
stir up trouble
British Ambassador to
Casablanca and meet with rival General Giraud: “We’ll call Giraud the
bridegroom, and I’ll produce him from Algiers, and you have the bride,
abroad. The two
the French Committee
de Gaulle, down from London, and we’ll have a shotgun wedding.”
did not meet again
of Liberation Alfred
Despite the photograph, the wedding was not a success.
until 2 April 1943.
Duff Cooper, and
De Gaulle began
after lunch Churchill
by saying that he was a prisoner and would be sent
decided that if he spoke French it would add a
to the enemy alien prison on the Isle of Man (which
lighter touch to the occasion. He remarked to Duff
he pronounced “eel-o-mon”). Churchill responded,
Cooper, “I’m doing rather well, aren’t I? Now that
“No, you are very distinguished, and so would go
the General speaks English so well, he understands
to the Tower of London!” But WSC did agree to
my French perfectly.” Everyone including de
Gaulle burst out laughing.27
allow de Gaulle to travel back to Algiers.23
Agreement could still not be reached with
A clash occurred over D-Day, where the
details were again withheld from de Gaulle beforeGiraud, and Churchill laid the blame on de Gaulle.
hand. Invited to London from Algiers, de Gaulle
When meeting with the U.S. Senate on 19 May 1943,
took his time and eventually arrived on 4 June.
Churchill said that he had “raised de Gaulle as a
Churchill met with him and after discussing the
pup…now he bit the hand that fed him.”24
With further pressure from Washington
invasion passed him on to General Eisenhower, who
gave specific information on the operation and asked
Churchill was close to a split with de Gaulle, but
him to broadcast after the landing. When
Anthony Eden and most of the British Cabinet
Eisenhower said he too would be broadcasting, de
interceded. Of an Algiers meeting with Eden on 25
Gaulle responded that he would not take second
May, de Gaulle recounted: “Mr. Eden goodplace in the broadcast and that Eisenhower had no
humouredly said ‘Do you know that you have
right to instruct the French people on civil adminiscaused us more difficulties than all our other
tration matters, which was part of his speech.
European allies put together?’ ‘I don’t doubt it,’ I
Churchill, already in an agitated state over the
replied, smiling also. ‘France is a great power.’”25
On 3 June 1943 an agreement of sorts was
impending landing, flew into a rage, only slightly >> FINEST HoUR 138 / 27
ENTENTE CORDIALE: Paris, Armistice Day, 11 November 1944. Tears streaming down his face, Churchill strides down the Champs
Elysees with de Gaulle in a tumult of cheers from liberated Parisians. Also in the photograph,left to right: British Ambassador to
France Alfred Duff Cooper (far left, bareheaded); WSC’s naval aide Cdr. “Tommy” Thompson (RN uniform), and British Foreign
Minister Anthony Eden. De Gaulle’s son Philippe is just visible behind his father’s right shoulder. This particular photograph was
uniquely autographed by Eden and Churchill at the bottom, and by de Gaulle in the upper left corner, which makes it priceless.
CHURCHILL AND DE GAULLE...
lessened when informed that de Gaulle would
speak, but not immediately after Eisenhower. Then the question was broached as to
vetting the draft of the speech beforehand. In the
end it was not done and de Gaulle gave a magnificent speech exhorting “the sons of France, whoever
they may be, wherever they may be, the simple and
sacred duty is to fight the enemy with every means
in its power.” De Gaulle went on to give heartfelt
thanks to the British for their effort in the liberation
of France. On hearing him, tears welled up in
Churchill’s eyes. Noticing a certain skepticism in
his Chief of Personal Staff, General Ismay, he said:
“You great tub of lard! Have you no sentiment?”28
With the Normandy bridgehead established,
de Gaulle left England on 16 June and wrote to
Churchill, “Upon leaving Great Britain, to which
you kindly invited me at a moment of decisive
importance to the successful conclusion of this war,
I would like to extend my sincerest thanks for the
welcome extended to me by His Majesty’s
Government....I have been able to see and feel that
the courage and power of the people of Great
Britain were of the highest order and that their feelings of friendship for France were stronger than
ever. I can assure you, in return, of the deep confidence and unbreakable attachment which France
feels towards Great Britain.”29
While the balance of the war still saw skirmishes between the two men, there were now more
occasions of warmth and mutual admiration. On 10
November 1944 Churchill flew to Paris. He was met
at the airport by de Gaulle and driven to the Quai
d’Orsay, where he was to stay. The accoutrements
were of the highest class. Churchill’s included a
golden bath, prepared by Goering for his own use;
Churchill was still more delighted to find that
Anthony Eden’s bath was only of silver.30
The following day, Armistice Day, de Gaulle
conducted Churchill in an open car across the Seine
and the two men walked the Champs Elysees,
teeming with thousands of cheering Parisians. The
diarist and MP Harold Nicolson stated that Eden
told him that “not for one moment did Winston
stop crying, and that he could have filled buckets
by the time he received the Freedom of Paris.” He
said “they yelled for Churchill in a way that he has
never heard any crowd yell before.”31
At an official luncheon de Gaulle said, “It is
true that we would not have seen [the liberation] if
our old and gallant ally England, and all the British
dominions under precisely the impulsion and inspiration of those we are honouring today, had not
deployed the extraordinary determination to win,
and that magnificent courage which saved the
freedom of the world. There is no French man or
woman who is not touched to the depths of their
hearts and souls by this.” It was General Spears, not Churchill, who
remarked, “the hardest cross I have to bear is the
Cross of Lorraine,” though WSC certainly shared
those sentiments. So why did he not abandon de
Gaulle after so many provocations? The answer is
in Churchill’s own words. In France’s darkest hour
Churchill had whispered to him, “L’homme du
destin.”32
At Casablanca in 1943 he said of de Gaulle:
“His country has given up fighting, he himself is a
refugee, and if we turn him down he’s finished. Well
just look at him! He might be Stalin, with 200 divisions behind his words....France without an army is
not France. De Gaulle is the spirit of that Army.
Perhaps the last survivor of a warrior race.” 33
Churchill added in August 1944, “ I have
never forgotten, and can never forget, that he stood
forth as the first eminent Frenchman to face the
common foe in what seemed to be the hour of ruin
of his country and possibly, of ours….”34
Of Churchill’s dismissal following the 1945
British general election, de Gaulle wrote: “To minds
inclined towards sentimentality this disgrace suddenly inflicted by the British Nation upon the great
man who had so gloriously led her to salvation and
victory might seem surprising. Yet there was
nothing in it that was not in accordance with the
order of human affairs....[Churchill’s] nature, identified with a magnificent undertaking, his countenance chiselled by the fires and frosts of great
events, had become inadequate in this era of mediocrity.”35
On 6 November 1958 in Paris, Churchill was
presented with the Croix de la Libération by de
Gaulle, now French President, who remarked: “I
want Sir Winston to know this. Today’s ceremony
means that France remembers what she owes him. I
want him to know this: the man who has just had
the honour of bestowing this distinction upon him
values and admires him more than ever.”36
Upon Churchill’s death on 24 January 1965
de Gaulle wrote to Queen Elizabeth, “In the great
✌
drama he was the greatest of all.”37 Endnotes
1. Kersaudy, François, Churchill and De Gaulle (New
York: Atheneum, 1983), 22.
2. Lacoutre, Jean, De Gaulle The Rebel 1890-1944
(London: Collins Harvill, 1990), 190.
3. De Gaulle, Charles, The Call to Honour (New York:
Viking, 1955), 57-58.
4. Churchill, Winston S. The Second World War, vol. 3,
Their Finest Hour (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949), 215.
5. Ibid., 213.
6. De Gaulle, op. cit., 84.
7. Churchill, op. cit., 232.
8. Lacoutre, op. cit., 249-50.
9. Kersaudy, op. cit., 87
10.Ibid., 100-02.
11. Berthon, Simon, Allies At War (New York: Carroll
& Graf, 2001), 46.
12. Kersaudy, op. cit., 115-16.
13. Ibid., 139.
14. Berthon, op. cit., 125.
15. Ibid., 136.
16. Colville, John, Footprints in Time (London:
Collins, 1976), 113-15.
18. Lacoutre, op. cit., 397.
20. Kersaudy, op. cit., 243.
22. Kersaudy, op. cit, 255.
23. Ibid, 267.
24. Ibid, 273.
25. Ibid, 280-81.
26. Macmillan, Harold, The Blast of War 1939-45
(London: Macmillan, 1967), 345-46.
30. Ibid., 374.
31. Nicolson, Harold, Diaries and Letters 1939-1945
(London: Collins, 1967), 412.
33. Moran, Lord, Churchill Taken from the Diaries of
Lord Moran (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 88.
34. Churchill, Winston S., The Dawn of Liberation
(Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1945), 206.
36. Ibid., 424.
37. Ibid., 428. FINEST HoUR 138 / 29
THE FRENCH CONNECTION (2)
“Français! C’est
moi, Churchill,
qui vous parle....”
Churchill’s
French
JAMES R. LANCASTER
W
DE GAULLE SAID THAT BY LEARNING ENGLISH HE
WAS ABLE TO UNDERSTAND CHURCHILL’S FRENCH.
WSC OFTEN SPOKE “FRANGLAIS,” BUT IS THERE
EVIDENCE OF MALICE AFORETHOUGHT? ARE
THERE STORIES OF THE COMMENTS AND
REACTIONS OF FRENCHMEN (AND WOMEN) WHICH
ECHO DE GAULLE’S REMARK? YES—AND THEY
SUGGEST WSC’S FRENCH WAS RATHER GOOD.
as Churchill’s French really as bad as we
are led to believe? It is variously
described on a scale from poor to execrable, not only by some of his contemporaries but also by later writers. This
calumny needs to be redressed. Here is my case.
In learning French, Churchill was luckier than
most of us; he had a mother who was fluent in the
language. Jennie Jerome had lived in Paris with her
mother Clara and her two sisters from 1867 to 1870,
and from 1871 to 1874, a total of six years. Jennie
spoke perfect French.
Many years later, in 1908, Churchill was fortunate in marrying someone whose French was also
impeccable. Clementine Hozier had learned the
French language first from her governess, Mlle.
Gonnard, and then from Mlle. Louise Henri,
described by Mary Soames in Clementine Churchill
as an intelligent and remarkable woman.1
In the summer of 1899 Lady Blanche Hozier
and her family moved to Puys, a small village by
the sea near Dieppe. Come the school year, the four
children moved to Dieppe. By the time the family
returned to Scotland in February 1900, as
Clementine’s daughter writes, she “distinguished
herself by winning, in open competition with students from all over the country, a handsome solid
silver medal for French, presented by the Société
des Professeurs Français en Angleterre. She
received it from the hands of Monsieur Jules
Cambon, the French Ambassador.”2
Of Churchill’s Harrow schooldays the French
historian François Bédarida writes: “He was strong
in History and French.…He started to use French
phrases and expressions.…Later in life it was
always a pleasure for him to speak French. When
he was twelve years old he acted the role of
Martine, the wife of Sganarelle in Le Médecin malgré
lui” (Molière’s The Reluctant Doctor).3
Winston’s French improved when he went to
the Army Class under the auspices of Louis Martin
Moriarty, a charming Parisian with remarkable
powers of conversation in both English and French.
It improved still further when, in his last year at the
school, he was taught by the distinguished French
teacher Bernard Jules Minssen.4 In 1891 the Harrow
Headmaster, the Rt. Rev. J.E.C. Welldon, insisted
that Winston spend a month with the Minssen
family near Versailles, to improve his French. In a December 1891 letter to his mother he
wrote: “I have already made great progress in
French. I begin to think in it….M. Minssen says I
know far more than he thought I did.”5 On
Christmas Eve he told his mother that the Minssen
family reported “Son progrès est merveilleux” (“He is
making excellent progress”).6 Of this there can be
no doubt. He passed into Sandhurst with a
respectable 60% in French.
His letters to his mother at this time are an
amusing juxtaposition of French and English
words. For example: “We arrived at Dieppe où nous
partook of de bon Café au lait. Le chemin de fer était très
confortable…Après le déjeuner we went for a walk.
We saw nothing but soldiers—De Seine de l’artillerie,
des cuirassiers et des chasseurs a pieds.”7
Henceforth and for the rest of his life,
Churchill was never afraid to use French words and
phrases when there was no exact equivalent in
English. In one of his letters to the Morning Post
from the Sudan in 1898 he wrote: “The quarrel is à
l’outrance” (“the quarrel has reached a stage where
there is no turning back”). In a letter to Clementine
from the Western Front in 1916 he says he is “d’un
pied à l’autre” (“twiddling my thumbs”). There are
hundreds of similar examples. Nor was he hesitant
in using French maxims and quotations. Of Lord
Cromer, who helped him with The River War in
April 1899, he cited the maxim, “On ne règne sur les
âmes que par le calme”8 (“One can only impose one’s
authority on other people by being calm and confident”).
By 1899, Churchill’s French had matured significantly. In 1944 one of his first French biographers, Jacques Arnavon, wrote of these years: “He
was already at home with the French language. It
had improved year by year. At this period of his life
it was written French which attracted him. In later
years he became more confident in speaking in
French, to the point where he could make short
speeches in the language.”9
Churchill’s self-education was based on wide
reading, including books in French. Authors
popular with the British at the turn of the century
were Montaigne and Voltaire, but Churchill also
amassed a significant library on Napoleon, about
whom he once hoped to write a biography. On one
buying spree in Paris he came away with almost
300 books. How many of them he read we do not
know, but this is how he came to read French documents and letters with consummate ease.
In meetings he could almost always follow
a conversation. Which is just as well, because most
French people he met only had a smattering of
English. This was in the days when French was the
lingua franca. There were exceptions of course.
General Nivelle spoke good English, as did Georges
Clemenceau, who lived in America from 1865 to
1869 and married Mary Plummer, an orphan from
Springfield, Massachusetts. But even here it is probable that Clemenceau and Churchill spoke French
when on French soil. For example, in Anthony
Montague Browne’s Long Sunset there is an account
of Churchill’s last meeting with Clemenceau. Churchill asked him, “What have you left?”
Clemenceau replied: “Il me reste mes griffes” (“I’ve
still got my claws”).10 This indicates that the conversation was in French. The “claws” were a reference to Clemenceau’s popular nickname “Tiger.”
Another Clemenceau story in Long Sunset is
about the day in 1918 when he met Churchill
wearing the uniform of an Elder Brother of Trinity
House. He asked Churchill why he was dressed up
as a semi-retired naval officer. Churchill replied in
French: “Je suis un Frère Ainé de la Trinité” (“I am an
Elder Brother of the Trinity”). Clemenceau, thinking
Churchill was a member of the Holy Trinity,
replied, “Quelle belle situation!” (“What a wonderful
position!”).11
While on the subject of Clemenceau, for whom
Churchill had the greatest admiration, and about
whom he wrote two brilliant monographs, it is
worth recording that Churchill knew by heart the
well-known song Le Père la Victoire (The Father of
Victory), which the singer Paulus made famous in
1889. The title of this popular song was attached to
Clemenceau after he became Prime Minister in
November 1917 and saved his country in the last
twelve months of the First World War. François Bédarida writes that Churchill knew
all the verses of Le Père la Victoire by heart, and that
he once recited the whole song to de Gaulle during
the Second World War.12 This is corroborated by de
Gaulle himself when writing about Churchill’s visit
to Paris on 11 November 1944: “On my orders the
band played Le Père la Victoire. And it was only his
due. Besides, I remembered that at Chequers, on the
evening of a black day, he had sung me our old
song by Paulus word perfectly.”13
After lunch on that memorable day, Duff Cooper, then British Ambassador, recalled: “We >> FINEST HoUR 138 / 31
CHURCHILL’S FRENCH...
went upstairs—de Gaulle, Coulet, Massigli,
Chauvel and Palewski on one side of the table,
Winston, Anthony, Alec Cadogan and I on the other.
We talked for about two hours—Winston talking
most of the time in his uninhibited and fairly intelligible French.”14
Mobilizing French
and Sending It into Battle
S
oon after becoming Prime Minister on 10
May 1940, Churchill realised that there was
an urgent need to put some backbone into
an increasingly demoralised French cabinet.
He flew to Paris on 16 May, again to Paris
on the 31st, to Briare, near Orleans, on 11 June, and
to Tours two days later. All these meetings have
been admirably recounted in General Spears’s
books Prelude to Dunkirk and The Fall of France.
Churchill’s long familiarity with the French language had prepared him for these critical meetings,
“for this hour and for this trial.”
At the first meeting on 16 May in Paris (at the
Quai d’Orsay, the French Foreign Office)—as
archives were being thrown onto bonfires in the
garden—Churchill spoke in French most of the
time. Lord Ismay recalled that he “dominated the
proceedings from the moment he entered the room.
There was no interpreter, and he spoke throughout
in French. His idiom was not always correct, and
his vocabulary was not equal to translating all the
words which he required with exactitude. But no
one could be in any doubt as to his meaning.”15
It was at this meeting that he asked General
Gamelin “Où est la masse de manœuvre?” (“Where
are your reserves?”)—a military phrase which
Churchill probably remembered from Monsieur
Moriarty’s Army Class at Harrow.16 The answer
was “Aucune” (“None”). During this same 16 May meeting Ismay tells
how General Gamelin recounted a tale of unmitigated woe, to which Churchill responded with:
“Evidently this battle will be known as the Battle of
the Bulge.” But “Boolge” was the nearest WSC
could get to “Bulge” in French.17 Fair enough: the
nearest French word is saillant (salient) but French
historians always refer to La Bataille des Ardennes,
never to La Bataille du Saillant. So “Boolge” it is!
There were two interpreters at the subsequent
meetings: Roland de Margerie translated from
English into French, and Captain Berkeley translated from French into English. Churchill spoke in
English, interspersed frequently with French words
and phrases. At the meeting in Paris on 31 May,
when discussing the evacuation of British and
French soldiers at Dunkirk, Churchill interrupted
Roland de Margerie by exclaiming that they would
leave French soil “bras dessus, bras dessous” (“arm in
arm”).18
The French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud
spoke good English, but at the Briare meeting on 11
June, there was one occasion when, after listening
to Churchill speaking French, as a debating tactic he
asked for a “traduction” (“translation”).19 Spears
describes one of Churchill’s perorations at this
meeting: “I ceased taking notes and watched him,
hypnotised. He found wonderful flashing words to
express his fiery eloquence. They came in torrents,
French and English phrases tumbling over each
other like waves racing for the shore when driven
by a storm.”20
Churchill’s spoken French was his own creation. As was his English, where he often invented
new words, such as “paintatious” to describe places
worthy of his brush. That he often spoke “franglais”
was intentional. There is his memorable phrase
during a heated discussion with de Gaulle in
Casablanca in January 1943 when he said “Si vous
m’obstaclerez, je vous liquiderai!,” which needs no
translation. It should be remembered that de Gaulle
spoke little English when he first arrived in
London, and it is fair to assume that when they met
they both spoke in French. De Gaulle’s English
improved over time, allowing him to joke that this
allowed him to understand Churchill’s French.
Churchill’s private secretary, John Colville,
wrote an amusing description of a meeting between
Churchill and de Gaulle, in the summer of 1941. It
started off badly. As Terry Reardon mentions in the
previous article, Colville went in after a while only to
find them smoking the Prime Minister’s cigars and
talking in French, “an exercise which Churchill could
never resist and one which his audience, even when
they spoke with the purity of de Gaulle, invariably
found fascinating.”21 And at his last meeting with
Churchill, in Nice on 22 October 1960, de Gaulle,
now President of France, enjoyed listening to
Churchill’s stories about the old days, recounted in a
French which needed no translation.22
Brigadier Ian Jacob has left us an amusing
account of Churchill’s ability to translate an English
text into French on the fly. On 30 January 1943
Churchill flew from Cairo to Adana in Turkey to
meet with President Inönü. Prior to the meeting he
had prepared a paper reviewing Anglo-Turkish
relations. The idea was that a member of the British
Embassy in Ankara, Paul Falla, would translate the
paper into French as it was read by Churchill. But
after a few minutes Churchill waved Falla aside
and translated his own text directly into French.
Jacob, whom Churchill had introduced to the
Turks as “le fils du Maréchal Jacob” (“the son of
[Field] Marshal Jacob”), noted for that day:
This amounted to doing orally with no time at all
for thought or preparation, a long Unseen into
French, no small task. The PM’s French is fairly
fluent, and he was rarely stuck for a word. But of
course he could only make a perfectly literal
translation, and his accent is almost pure
English….The PM waded resolutely on, and came
out at the far end bloody but unbowed. It was
really quite a tour de force, of an unusual kind!
Peculiar though it all was, I do not think anyone
felt like laughing. They couldn’t help admiring
his determination and self-possession.23
Churchill as
French Writer and Speaker
I
n his writing, Churchill frequently used
French words and phrases where the context
and the meaning were appropriate. And he
used them accurately. Some might even think
that he could write French verse. In his
delightful postwar book about his hobby, Painting
as a Pastime, there is the delightful verse:
La peinture à l’huile
Est bien difficile,
Mais c’est beaucoup plus beau
Que la peinture à l’eau 24
However, this is not an example of the muse in
WSC but of his memory. It comes from a popular
song which most French children know by heart.
What about Churchill’s accent? Without any
doubt he made little attempt to emulate the polished French accent of colleagues such as Colville,
Eden or Spears. On the contrary, he often went out
of his way to use the English pronunciation of
foreign names and cities, for example Shams Ellizie
for Champs Élysées! In conversation with Jack Seely
he once said: “Jack, when you cross Europe you
land at Marsai, spend a night in Lee-on and another
in Par-ee, and, crossing by Callay, eventually reach
Londres. I land at Mar-sales, spend a night in Lions,
and another in Paris, and come home to London.”25
He made several broadcasts and speeches in
French, notably his radio broadcast on 21 October
1940, and his speech in Ottawa on 30 December
1941, where he briefly addressed his French
Canadian audience. Jean Oberlé, who worked for
the French section of the BBC from July 1940 to the
end of the war, wrote a book in 1945 about his five
years in London. In his Jean Oberlé vous parle is an
amusing description of the preparation of the radio
broadcast on 21 October 1940. (I paraphrase):
The English version of the broadcast was sent
to the French section of the BBC to be translated.
The head of the section, Jacques Duchesne, took the
translation to Churchill at 10 Downing Street. After
lunch he was offered a cigar and a whisky and then
listened to Churchill reciting the broadcast in
French. He returned in the evening for a second
practice session. Bombs were falling close by.
Duchesne remarked that there did not appear to be
much security at 10 Downing Street. Churchill burst
out laughing: “Si une bombe tombe sur la maison, nous
mourrons comme deux braves gens!” (“If a bomb falls
on this building, we will die nobly together”).26
Duchesne did not find this very reassuring.
Churchill’s broadcast in French on 21 October
1940 began: “Français! C’est moi, Churchill, qui vous
parle. Pendant plus de trente ans, dans la paix comme
dans la guerre, j’ai marché avec vous, et je marche encore
avec vous aujourd’hui.”27
One can hear Churchill speaking these words
in a BBC audio CD called Churchill Remembered,
published in 2006. His French accent is remarkably
good—much better than the French accent of most
of his compatriots.28
The English version of this memorable broadcast is: “Good night then: sleep to gather strength
for the morning. For the morning will come.
Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly
upon all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the
tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn. Vive la
France!” By their firesides in France, those who
were brave enough to listen to the BBC could not
fail to be heartened by these words:
Allons, bonne nuit; dormez bien, rassemblez vos forces
pour l’aube, car l’aube viendra. Elle se lèvera, brillante
pour les braves, douce pour les fidèles qui auront souffert,
glorieuse sur les tombeaux des héros. Vive la France !
Most of the audio recordings of Churchill’s
well-known speeches and broadcasts include these
words of hope and encouragement. The accent is
very Churchillian—clear, expressive and completely
unaffected. In Britain’s finest hour he not only
inspired his listeners at home; he also raised the
spirits of all French men and women in their Heure
Tragique, their darkest hour.
This was not the last time he asked his listeners to dormez bien (sleep well). Many years later he
ended his broadcast from Ottawa on 30 June 1954,
during his last visit to Canada:
Au revoir mes amis Canadiens. C’est toujours un
plaisir pour moi de faire un séjour dans votre pays, que
j’ose considérer presque comme le mien. Au revoir et
dormez bien. C’est un avenir splendide qui vous attend
demain. Bonsoir. Goodnight.29
Footnotes overleaf >>
CHURCHILL’S FRENCH...
1. Soames, Mary, Clementine
Churchill (London: Cassell, 1979), 11.
2. Ibid., 22.
3. Bédarida, François, Churchill
(Paris: Fayard, 1999), 49.
4. Churchill, Randolph S., Winston S.
Churchill, Companion Volume I, Part 1
(London: Heinemann, 1967), 295.
5. Ibid., 298.
6. Ibid., 299.
7. Ibid., 297.
8. Arnavon, Jacques, W. Churchill
(Paris: Les Éditions Universelles, 1944), 25.
9. Ibid., 26.
10. Montague Browne, Anthony, Long
Sunset (London: Cassell, 1995), 198.
11. Ibid., 322. In 1913 as First Lord
of the Admiralty, Churchill became an
Elder Brother of Trinity House, which
looks after aids to navigation.
12. Bédarida, op. cit., 450n.
13. Kersaudy, François, Churchill & de
Gaulle (London: Fontana, 1990), 378,
quoting Charles de Gaulle, Le Salut, 49.
14. Duff Cooper, Alfred, Old Men
Forget (London: Hart-Davis, 1953), 341.
15. Ismay, The Lord, Memoirs
16. The author has asked many literate Frenchmen the meaning of the
phrase La masse de manœuvre. None
knew, since it is a strictly military term.
17. Ismay, op. cit., 127.
18. Spears, Edward, Prelude to
Dunkirk (New York: Wyn, 1954), 308.
19. Avon, The Earl of, The Reckoning
(London: Cassell, 1965), 116.
20. Spears, Edward, The Fall of
France (London: Heinemann, 1954), 148.
21. Colville, John, Footprints in Time
(London: Collins, 1976), 114-15.
22. Kersaudy, François, Churchill et
Monaco (Monaco: Rocher, 2002), 91.
23. Gilbert, Martin, Winston S.
Churchill, vol. VII Road to Victory
24. Painting in oils/Is quite difficult/But it is much more rewarding/
Than painting in watercolours.
25. Brooks, Collin, “Churchill the
Conversationalist” in Eade, Charles.,
ed., Churchill by his Contemporaries
(London: Hutchinson, 1953), 363.
26. Oberlé, Jean, Jean Oberlé vous
parle: souvenirs de cinq années à Londres
(Paris: La Jeune Parque, 1945), 75.
27. “Frenchmen! This is me,
Churchill, speaking to you. For more
than thirty years, in peace and in war, I
have marched with you, and I am
marching still along the same road.”
28. Churchill Remembered, BBC
Audio 2006. Churchill’s words in
French can be heard on CD2 at the end
of track 9, entitled Broadcasts to
Occupied Europe.
29. “Goodbye, my Canadian
friends. I always enjoy visiting your
country, which I have come to look on
almost as my own. Goodnight and sleep
well. There is a wonderful future awaiting you in the morning. Goodnight.”
Dilks, David, The Great Dominion
(Toronto: Allen, 2005), 426-27. ✌
“SEEING CLAW TO CLAW” • WILL MORRISEY
“All might have been well had de Gaulle been an ordinary General or even an ordinary man. He is not. He is
an extraordinary man. He is an eagle with bad habits. Winston, who is a house-trained eagle, does not see claw
to claw with him.” —Harold Nicolson Aristotle describes the magnanimous or great-souled man, but he does not say
what would happen if two of them came into the same room. And what if two
such men came together during the greatest and most noteworthy of wars, a war
in which the most dangerous tyrannies of all time contended against one
another, and also against the greatest republics? Would we not need a
Thucydides as well as an Aristotle to help us understand this event? We do have something in a
way as valuable: the writings of Winston S. Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, who worked for
and against one another. From their writings we know they quarreled, not only over English
policies in French colonies and over the conduct of the war itself, but more importantly over the
political character of the immediate postwar settlement, both in France, the conquered republic,
and in Germany, the conquering then conquered tyranny. We also know that they cooperated,
often in measured opposition to their mighty wartime allies—the United States of Franklin
Roosevelt and the Soviet Union of Josef Stalin. By 1946 America and Russia, the regime of democratic republicanism and the regime of undemocratic despotism, each held the destinies of half
the world in its hands. Neither Churchill nor de Gaulle wanted that, but in their unflinching way
each saw it happening and conceived of geopolitical strategies, first to meet Germany’s threat,
then to meet the consequent rise of America and Russia. In all that they wrote on these matters
both exhibited the quality André Malraux would see in de Gaulle: “He was shrewd and even,
sometimes, clairvoyant. But his intelligence had more to do with the level of his thought, what
Chateaubriand called the intelligence of greatness of soul.”
This thoughtful paper was delivered at the “Churchill and France” panel sponsored by The Churchill Centre at the
American Political Science Association meeting, August 2007. Too long for our pages, it is available to readers
by email attachment from the editor, malakand@langworth.name ✌
CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGS
Britain’s “impregnable fortress” surrendered
to the Japanese on 15 February 1942.
Churchill called it “the worst disaster and
largest capitulation in British history”; but in
July 1942, five months after the fact, WSC
said: “I have never made any predictions,
except things like saying Singapore would
hold out. What a fool and a knave I should
have been to say it would fall.” Our 2007
Vancouver conference considered: just how
“impregnable” was the “fortress”? Could it
have been saved? What did Winston
Churchill know, and when did he know it?
DID SINGAPORE
HAVE TO FALL?
1. Hope is Not a Strategy
RICHARD M. TORRE
They grouped together about their chief
And each looked at his mate
Ashamed to think that Australian men
Should meet such a bitter fate.
And black was the wrath in each hot heart
And savage oaths they swore
As they thought of how they had all been ditched
By “Impregnable” Singapore.
—Dame Mary Gilmore, Australian Poet
W
hen Christopher Hebb snookered, I mean
invited, me here this morning, it was to
debate Bill Ives, the Centre’s most recent
past president. Bill, Chris and I agreed to
a “spirited, no holds barred” format, the
bloodthirsty Hebb wanting body parts on the floor.
I was temporarily relieved when Bill Ives was
compelled to withdraw. Being skewered by a litigator from Chicago is not high on my personal wish
list. Relieved, that is, until I read Professor
Raymond Callahan’s CV. I was convinced that my
only defense would be a sudden case of pneumonia. Hebb got wind of my plot and bribed my wife
to force-feed me vitamins. Frankly, it was more
effective than anything Britain did in South East
Asia between the two world wars. My plot was
foiled and I am here.
But I’ve come to see that I have a second line
of defense for my position that Singapore had to
fall. It can be summarized in five words: Hope is
not a strategy.
In the sixty-five years since the fall of
Singapore, many excellent works have emerged,
several by my opponent. Typewriters were clanging
before 1942 was out, espousing theories, reporting
facts and concocting fairy tales as to why it took
only seventy days for these little yellow men with
buck teeth, poor vision and limited understanding
of the modern world (the contemporary cartoonist
image) to humble mighty Britain and its regional
satellites, India and Australia.
Perhaps the best of these was written in 1971
by Gen. S. Woodburn Kirby, official British military
historian, in his posthumously published Chain of
Disaster. Kirby posited that there was a linking of
responsibilities from 1921 until the collapse of >>
Mr. Torre is chairman of Dartmouth Associates, a merchant
and investment bank. He assisted in establishing the USS
Missouri National Monument, the New Orleans D-Day
National Museum, and the World War II Memorial. FINEST HoUR 138 / 35
SINGAPORE...
Singapore in 1942. It was the political, economic,
military and leadership failures, all compounded,
which doomed the island fortress in the opening
weeks of 1942.
In this and dozens—no hundreds—of works,
there is a central theme: the hope that the Royal
Navy would steam to the rescue. That is—as long
as the Japanese didn’t have the temerity to strike at
an inopportune moment, like when Britain’s finite
resources were deployed elsewhere, such as the
Mediterranean and Atlantic.
Indeed, Professor Callahan will affirm this
view. In his outstanding book, The Worst Disaster:
The Fall of Singapore, Ray stated: “The basic fact was
that Britain after 1918 was no longer able and,
perhaps, no longer willing, to defend her world
position built up in the Victorian era. Churchill
could not alter this. What he did was to see clearly
that Britain could fight one war, or lose two.”
So, as you can see there is really no debate at
all. The simple answer is “Yes,” Singapore had to
fall. Just as its sponsor state, Britain, disintegrated
as a world power after three hundred years, its
chattel Singapore was equally doomed. From Pax
Britannia’s apex in 1900 to a hollowed out shell by
1918 and a fiction by 1942, the jig was up, and all
the world could see—especially the Asiatic world.
The disintegration of empires gets very sloppy.
Ambiguity abounds. There’s no lack of culpable
individuals and incidents that can be blamed.
Singapore was but a single tile in a mosaic,
strategically, logistically and tactically indefensible
in an age when isolated, fixed fortifications were
obsoleted by technology and mobility.
A dozen summarizing points:
1. Singapore was not and could not be an
“impregnable fortress” by any definition. This
wasn’t the 1800s and this wasn’t Khartoum.
2. If Singapore were so critical to the British
Empire, then having the “B” Team of Commanderin-Chief Far East Robert Brooke-Popham (relieved
during the Battle for Malaya) and General Arthur E.
Percival (British commander at Singapore) in charge
was incomprehensible. Neither was Chinese
Gordon and both were completely overmatched by
Japan’s General Yamashita.
3. For a litany of reasons, many economic, the
defenders were ill-equipped. Even the air defense
strategy, which succeeded the naval defense, was
starved and never approached the presumed
requirement of 336 modern aircraft (there being on
hand but 180 obsolete Buffalos and Wildebeests).
Never underestimate an opponent, for they will
most certainly not do what you expect.
4. Once and for all, the 15-inch guns were not
pointing the wrong way. Four of the five had Mark
ANTAGONISTS: Lt General Arthur E. Percival CB DSO OBE
MC (1887-1966), left. Imprisoned by the Japanese after his
surrender, he was honored to stand next to another former
POW, General Wainwright, during the Japanese surrender on
USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. General
Tomoyuki Yamashita (1885-1946), right, was hanged for war
crimes involving a massacre in Manila, Philipines, although
the legitimacy of his guilt was questioned. He died affirming
his respect for former enemies.
II naval turret mountings and 360-degree traverse if
the obstructing cables and gun-stops were removed,
as they were. Two of the five 15-inch rifles (two
others obstructed by hills), along with all six of the
9.2-inch guns, fired north during the battle. All the
6-inch guns on Tekong Island also fired into Johore.
The greater limitation was the lack of high explosive, anti-personnel ammunition, most being armor
piercing for ship assault. The latter was ineffective
against massed formations, intended for the
Japanese fleet that never came. There’s that problem
again: “the enemy does what it can, not what you
expect it to do.”
5. If you want to lead a coalition, it’s a good
thing to have conformity of strategic goals. In the
months and weeks prior to the attack on 8
December 1941, there were draining disputes with
Australia, in particular, over the Far East/Near
North dichotomy.
6. John Curtin, the pacifist of the Thirties who
succeeded Robert Menzies as Australian Prime
Minister, became the appeaser of 1940, attempting
to negotiate with his friend, Ambassador Tatsuo
Kawai, for a separate peace with Japan. The prize
was the iron ore deposits in Yampi Sound. As these
discussions began to fail, Kawai told Curtin straight
out on 29 November 1941—ten days prior to the
attack—that matters had “gone too far.”
Curtin had become increasingly hawkish from
mid-1941. Equipped with this additional knowl-
edge, he became embarrassingly more vocal with
his criticisms of London’s policies, demanding that
they immediately assume the defensive positions in
Southern Thailand known as the Matador Plan. He
was unsuccessful, as was Percival, whose dithering
scuttled this opportunity;
7. Lest one think Curtin a traitor, one must put
his actions within the context of the time. Britain’s
Far East policy from 1939 was one of appeasement,
a play for time. An odious example was Britain’s
being quite willing to starve the Chinese following
Japan’s demand to close the Burma Road, reopening it under U.S. pressure in late 1941.
8. Though one prominent turncoat, Capt.
Heenan, was executed, Singapore’s failures were
not the result of fifth column activity. There was significant Japanese spy infiltration into Thailand and
Malaya from 1937. These spies were fully versed on
the woeful state of British preparedness.
9. The sinking of Repulse and Prince of Wales
was a psychological blow. But these assets were
never deployed in any serious military context and
had zero effect upon the tactical outcome.
10. The three national forces, the British,
Australians and Indians, especially the Indians and
the Australian replacements, were conspicuously
untrained. The last reinforcements, in January 1942,
virtually marched off their transports and into captivity at Changi.
11. The civilian administration under Shelton
Thomas was obstructionist and actually forbade
military preparations on the basis of not wishing to
alarm the population.
12. There are well-substantiated allegations
that some of the Indian troops ran under fire, and
that others joined the Japanese Army. Lest this
suggest some character or racial defect, let the
record show that as they jumped into the waters of
Keppel Harbour, they landed atop the Aussies who
beat them to the docks. And why not? Aussie Gen.
Gordon Bennett fled Singapore without permission.
Poor leadership in the field is a virus that will sap
the will of any army to fight.
So, as you can see, the confluence of a deteriorating fictional empire, limited resources, extraordinary incompetence and unpreparedness doomed
Singapore.
The British attempted to lure the U.S. Fleet to
the base as a hoped-for deterrent to Japanese
aggression. General George Marshall vetoed the
plan. It was one more rung in the ladder of hope:
We hope we won’t be preoccupied at the instant of
a Japanese attack; and, if we are, we hope the U.S.
will curtail the Japanese dog.
Unfortunately for Britain, this last bit of
wishful thinking found the U.S. preoccupied with
its isolationism, unprepared for war and full of its
own prejudices as to Japanese capabilities. And so,
65,000 Japanese field troops managed to overcome
138,000 ultimate captives and casualties.
Churchill saved Western Democracy as we
know it, but he could not save the echo of the
British Raj, and he could not save Singapore.
Nobody could. ✌
2. “Responsible but
Unrepentant”
RAYMOND P. CALLAHAN
A
t the Admiralty during the “twilight
war,” discussing his sponsorship of a
prototype armored trench digger known
as “Cultivator Number One,” Churchill
remarked that he was “responsible but
unrepentant.” It is not a bad description of the position he took—albeit less forthrightly—about his role
in what he called the “worst disaster” in Britain’s
military history: the fall of Singapore. We are here
today to assess how much of the blame for that
debacle he should shoulder before history.
The starting point in this assessment is the fundamental flaw in the “Singapore strategy” devised
shortly after World War I: the assumption that, once
the Singapore base was built, the Royal Navy would
always be free to deploy eastwards to confront
Japan. “Main fleet to Singapore” was the slogan
describing this strategy. Carefully never answered
was a question posed at an early date: What
happens if a European threat made such a deployment impossible? Perhaps, as Geoffrey Best has suggested, the
sense after 1918 that this particular problem of
imperial defense was essentially insoluble led to a
tacit agreement—in London to be sure, but also and
less understandably in Canberra as well—not to
confront the issue. Churchill was in office first as
Colonial Secretary and then as Chancellor of the
Exchequer when the Singapore strategy took shape,
and so bears some responsibility for it, but surely
not more than the other policymakers involved—
politicians, admirals and civil servants alike.
The situation Churchill confronted from May
1940 to February 1942 poses, of course, a very different question. Churchill was Prime Minister and Minister of Defense; his responsibility for a military
catastrophe is inescapable. But how much at that >> Dr. Callahan is Professor Emeritus of History, University of
Delaware, Newark, Delaware. His books include Churchill:
Retreat from Empire; Burma, 1942-45; The Worst Disaster: The
Fall of Singapore; and most recently Churchill and His Generals.
SINGAPORE...
point could he really have changed? The answer is,
I would suggest, very little. Britain was fighting for
its life, and Churchill was not about to risk the loss
of the war against Germany by trying to be adequately prepared in the Far East for a war against
Japan that might, with luck, never come. It was crystal clear in May 1940 that neither
the main fleet nor any substantial part of it could
now go to Singapore. Churchill signed off in
August 1940 on a new plan that gave the RAF the
lead role in defending the Malay Peninsula and
Singapore. But Churchill’s real strategy for the Far
East was to depend upon the United States to deter
Japan. At the back of his mind lurked the thought,
freely albeit privately admitted at the time, that a
Japanese attack which brought the United States
into the war at Britain’s side would be well worth
the resulting (in his mind, temporary) forfeits in the
Far East. Now we come to what, I would suggest, is the
key issue: Given Churchill’s strategic framework,
could he have done more for the defenders of
Malaya and Singapore than he did? Here lies the
heart of the case we must answer.
I put it to you that there were three areas
where he could have done more—but that even if
he had done more, it would have made no perceptible impact on the final result. The first of these areas is the Byzantine and
self-defeating chain of command in the Far East. It
certainly could have been restructured—but that
alteration would have made little difference unless
better personnel, civil and military, were posted
there. No organization ever has enough first-class
talent, and 1940-41 was not the moment to park
some of it in an inactive theater. In any case, many
people besides the Prime Minister bear responsibility for the structure and staffing of command in the
Far East.
Second, there is the air power strategy put in
place in August 1940. There was never agreement
on how many aircraft were in fact needed to carry
out the strategy. Furthermore, the RAF in the Far
East never came within striking distance of even the
minimum figure (336 first-line aircraft). The 188
actually available in December 1941 were an assortment of aircraft that were either inappropriate,
obsolete, or flat-out museum pieces. Meanwhile, 699 modern aircraft had been
shipped to the Soviet Union between June and
December 1941. Would some of them, if diverted to
the Far East, have made a difference? Probably not.
The RAF fighter squadrons in the United Kingdom
were formidable because they were part of an integrated air defense system. There was not the time,
resources or personnel to establish such a system in
the Far East. Similarly, modern anti-shipping strike
aircraft were only just becoming available to the
RAF, and few could be spared for the Far East. And,
of course, continued Russian resistance was vital to
Britain’s survival in a way Singapore was not.
Third, there was the matter of the Singapore
“fortress.” Churchill spoke often of it and believed
Singapore was a true fortress, capable of all-around
defense. This misapprehension of the nature of the
great naval base informed much of his thinking on
the Far East. Of course, Singapore was not and could never
have been a true fortress. (For one thing, its water
was supplied from the mainland.) Churchill here
was clearly wrong—but should not the Chief of the
Imperial General Staff or Churchill’s own military
staff officers have corrected him? We know they did
not, and the reason seems to have been that some—
rather incredibly—shared his mistaken belief that
Singapore was a true fortress. In any case, all were as focused as he was on
the European war. The sad truth is that no one in
London wanted to be bothered by a hypothetical
Far Eastern war when they were barely holding
their own in the all-too-real war on their doorstep.
Even if they had been paying more attention, there
was little or nothing that they could have done.
The argument I have been advancing is that
while, of course, Churchill—along with many
others over a twenty-year period—bears responsibility for the 1941-42 disaster in the Far East, his
“guilt” is mitigated by the iron constraints in which
he found himself. Perhaps he deserves at this point
to speak in his own defense: “The major dispositions were right...if I had known all about it then as
I know now, there were no substantial resources
that could have been diverted....” ✌
DEBACLE: British, Indian and Australian troops march off to
captivity before the triumphant enemy, February 1942.
3. Mr. Torre Replies
N
o, Winston Churchill’s actions from his
ascendancy to Chancellor of the Exchequer
in 1924 through the fall of Singapore in 1942
were not the sole cause of the disaster. But I
believe they gave new meaning to the
phrase “Asiatic Theatre of Operations.”
With his grip on England’s purse prior to the
Great Depression, he repeatedly vetoed or curtailed
expenditures for Singapore’s defense and the naval
base. As a private citizen in March 1939, he told
Chamberlain that “losses and punishment” in the
Far East were to be suffered in preference to weakening the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean.
When Bourke-Popham was sent to the Far East
Command, Churchill didn’t even meet with him;
nor did the General Staff. I recall the canard about
success having a thousand fathers and failure being
an orphan; in this case it seems it was an expected
failure.
And on and on the litany goes, up to and
including actions in January 1942 with respect to
reinforcements being diverted to Burma before the
Australians demanded they stop.
Against these actions is a rhetoric of ambiguity, some say duplicity, with respect to the Pacific
Dominions, trading security assurances for troops
to be deployed in North Africa and the Middle East.
I believe that attempts to square the theatrical
rhetoric with consistent actions over 18 years are so
much eyewash. Churchill was the most focused,
clear-eyed strategist of his time. He was not a Prime
Minister of the world, but of Britain, who recognized his primary duty as its survival. All else was
disposable and/or negotiable. How else did a hollowed-out Empire not only gain a seat at the table,
but often sit at the head?
He knew the United States was one of two
critical keys to victory. Another was bleeding the
Germans white on the steppes of Russia. He may
have misjudged the timing of U.S. entry into the
war, but not the ultimate reality of its doing so. And
that wasn’t as evident in 1939 as it is now, nor was
depending upon the U.S. as sure a thing. Sir Robert Vanisttart, Under Secretary for
Foreign Relations, stated: “1) The USA will always
disappoint; 2) Beware of American suggestions that
we should cooperate against Japan in the Far East.
The Americans will let us down or stab us in the
back; 3) We ought be more preoccupied in keeping
Japan friendly than endeavouring to better our existing relations with the U.S. which are as good as that
unreliable Country will or can allow them to be.”
Whilst the Dominions might have felt elements of anger and betrayal at Singapore, such feelings were naïve, or at the least misdirected. They
were certainly alerted by Lavarek and others from
the Thirties with respect to Royal Navy limitations.
Churchill used his assets brilliantly, including his
Svengaliesque hold over Roosevelt.
Singapore was the melancholy victim of circumstance. Steely genius knew how to measure the
odds. The war was an all-out battle for survival, not
a Vegas craps table. The war’s outcome, as history
has vindicated, never depended upon control of the
Straights of Malacca.
Hold the coalition together: that was
Churchill’s prime directive. Placate the Aussies,
send Force Z…It was lost? “Oh, my.”
To this day there are subscribers to Churchill’s
“shock” at learning that Singapore was not an
impregnable fortress, and gibberish persists about
Victorian definitions of the term. Were Churchill a
yokel this might be plausible, but surely not from
the shrewdest mind of the war and someone who
knew more about the language than most. Not an
impregnable fortress? “Oh, my.”
Some saw through the rhetoric and ambiguity
as those who referred to SEAC (Southeast Asia
Command) as “Save England’s Asiatic Colonies.”
I don’t suggest Churchill was callous—just wise
enough to know this was total war, and that the
Marquis of Queensbury rules didn’t apply. Even if
there was a magic bullet—and there was not—
Britain did not have the logistical capability and/or
sealift capacity to implement it.
If Churchill failed at Singapore, beyond completely underestimating the Japanese, it was in the
hope that he could emerge from the war with an
intact British Empire. He was wrong. Earlier I expressed my view that Churchill
saved the western world. I not only don’t deplore
his tactics, I applaud them. This intrepid, focused
and visionary leader faced the insoluble challenge
and found a course to victory. ✌
4. Dr. Callahan Responds
R
5. Reflections on the
Australian Reality
DAVID JABLONSKY
ichard Torre and I agree on many points.
The disaster of February 1942 had roots
stretching back to the aftermath of World
War I, when Britain faced a new world in
which its resources were sharply constrained while
its commitments, already global, had grown. The
resultant insoluble strategic dilemma was evaded
by a strategy that contained a very considerable
element of wishful thinking. That strategy became
increasingly unreal after the mid-1930s and was a
Potemkin village by 1940. This situation was Churchill’s inheritance. He
focused on the war against Germany, where
Britain’s existence was at stake, and hoped that
Japan would be deterred by the Americans. Richard and I disagree about the genuineness
of Churchill’s surprise at the loss of Force Z (Prince
of Wales and Repulse) and, a few weeks later, when
he learned that the “Singapore fortress” did not
exist. I do not believe that Churchill’s reactions in
these cases were feigned. Winston Churchill was many things, but he
was not a great actor. In common with others, he
overrated Admiral Tom Phillips and underrated the
Japanese. In common with most of Whitehall, he
simply wasn’t paying much attention to the true
state of affairs in Malaya and Singapore because of
the enormous, grinding pressure of the European
war, something he later admitted. Even for Winston
Churchill, the day had only twenty-four hours. He
also knew how history works. Excoriating the great
Victorian historian, Thomas Babington Macaulay,
for his misleading treatment of the First Duke of
Marlborough, Churchill wrote that history would
pin the label “liar” to Macaulay’s “genteel coattails.” Churchill knew well the same thing could
happen to him. His account of his reactions seems
to me perfectly credible. Singapore was a Greek tragedy: many victims,
few heroes; simply people caught in a situation
created by Britain’s past that they were powerless
to alter. When that situation brought catastrophe,
there was a perhaps quite understandable urge to
identify scapegoats—Brooke Popham, Percival, the
Australians, and later Churchill. But Churchill (and
Whitehall in general) were not the first – and certainly not the last – to face an insoluble problem
and turn away from it to the comfort of fanciful
beliefs. And that is the real lesson of Singapore. As
Churchill put it in another context: “Facts are better
than dreams.” ✌
C
hurchill was consistent in his approach to
British national interests. As to Australia
he was less consistent. One historian commented: “Of the Far East he knew
nothing. Australia was a very distant country,
which produced some great fighting men, and some
black swans for the pond at Chartwell, but it cannot
be said that it otherwise excited his imagination or
his interest.”
Much of the misunderstandings and false
expectations over what Britain and Churchill could
do to defend Australia were owed to the fact that
initially in the war there was no clear sense of
Australian national interests as distinct from those
of Britain. This led to misplaced assumptions and
unfulfilled expectations as the interests of the two
countries began to diverge under the weight of war.
For Australia, the primary threat to its most
vital national interests was Japan. Involvement in
the European war could only further those national
interests if the Imperial connection, which had left
Australia ill prepared for war, could ensure
Australian security once war began.
But given Britain’s disconnect in its global
responsibilities, owing to the German existential
threat, an inexorable prioritization of British interests began. The Middle East, Soviet Union, Indian
Ocean and Burma-India theatre began to draw off
resources even as the British perception of the possibility of a full-scale Japanese invasion of Australia
diminished.
The inevitable reaction occurred. Australian
Prime Minister John Curtin’s December 1941 declaration of his country’s new focus on the United
States can be seen in the light of a recognition,
however belated, of a small power’s national interests, and its trading the protection of one great
power for another.
Which brings me to my final point—that the
efforts of the Empire, and particularly the
Dominions, were an essential part of Great Britain’s
achieving her most vital goal: national survival.
The famous 1940 David Low cartoon, depicting a soldier standing alone on the beach with one
Col. Jablonsky, USA (ret.) was professor of National Security
Affairs in the Department of National Security and Strategy
at the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and is
the author of two books on Churchill and grand strategy.
arm raised defiantly to the sky and a caption
reading, “Very Well, Alone,” really represents the
soldiers of the Empire. As an example, it was not
until the buildup to the Battle of Alamein in North
Africa that the British Isles component of the Eighth
Army outnumbered its troops from India, Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa, Palestine, East and
West Africa and the national contingents from
Poland, France and Greece. And recall that by 1945,
the Indian Army numbered 2,500,000 men—the
largest volunteer Army in history.
Recall also that Canada, in addition to agricultural, industrial and financial aid, provided over a
million volunteers from a population base of only
11 million, and that 42,000 Canadians were killed.
Or that New Zealand, with a population base of
1,700,000, sent 140,000 overseas, with over 11,000
killed. Last but certainly not least, Australia, with
over one million serving in the armed forces, out of
a 7,000,000 population base, ended with 30,000
dead in that conflict. Then think about these words:
“Japan is at the other end of the world. She
cannot menace our vital security in any way. She
has no reason whatever to come into collision with
us. She has every reason to avoid such a collision.
The only sufficient cause which could draw us into
a war with Japan would be if she invaded Australia.
Does anybody imagine she is going to do so?....It is
an absolute absurdity. Even if America stood inactive Japan would be ruined. She would never
attempt it.” —WSC to Stanley Baldwin, 15 December 1924
“We refuse to accept the dictum that the Pacific
struggle must be treated as a subordinate segment
of the general conflict….The Australian government
therefore regards the Pacific struggle as primarily
one in which the United States and Australia must
have the fullest say in the direction of the democracies’ fighting plan. Without any inhibitions of any
kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to
America free of any pangs as to our traditional links
with the United Kingdom.”
—Prime Minister John Curtin, 27 December 1942.
Signed statement in Australian newspapers
“We are doing our utmost in the mother country
to meet living perils and onslaughts. We have sunk all
Party differences and have universal compulsory
service….I hope therefore you will be considerate in
the judgment which you pass upon those to whom
Australian lives and fortunes are so dear.”
—WSC to John Curtin, 14 January 1943 Curtin to WSC: “We make no apologies for our
effort, or even for what you argue we are not doing.
The various parts of the Empire, as you know, are
differently situated, possess various resources and
have their own peculiar problems.”
WSC to Curtin: “To try to be safe everywhere
is to be strong nowhere.”
Curtin to WSC: “Just as you foresaw events in
Europe, so we felt that we saw the trend of the Pacific
situation more clearly than was realized in London.”
“As long as the British Navy is undefeated,
and as long as we hold Singapore, no invasion of
Australia or New Zealand by Japan is
possible....Can one suppose that Japan, enjoying
herself in the mastery of the Yellow Sea, would
send afloat a conquering and colonising expedition
to Australia? It is ludicrous. More than one hundred
thousand men would be needed to make any
impression upon Australian manhood….The great
danger to the world at the present time still lies, not
in the far east, not in the quarrels of the yellow
peoples, but in the heart of Christendom and
Europe.”
—WSC to Neville Chamberlain, 27 March 1939
“I confess that in my mind the whole Japanese
menace lay in a sinister twilight, compared with our
other needs. My feeling was that if Japan attacked
us the United States would come in. If the United
States did not come in we had no means of defending the Dutch East Indies, or indeed our own
Empire in the East. If, on the other hand, Japanese
aggression drew in America I would be content to
have it. On this I rested. Our priorities during 1941
stood: first, the defence of the Island, including the
threat of invasion and the U-boat war, secondly, the
struggle in the Middle East and Mediterranean,
thirdly, after June, supplies to Soviet Russia, and,
last of all, resistance to a Japanese assault.”
—WSC, The Grand Alliance, 1950
“I regret this cost to our commitments elsewhere, but it was in our vital interests to do so as
the Russians will shortly be engaged in mortal
combat with our main enemy.”
—WSC, November 1942, on the transfer of air
assets to the Soviet Union, quoted by Australian
historian David Day, The Great Betrayal, 315.
“The Australians’ claim that they had understood and foreseen the dangers in the Far East and
from Japan better than I had done in London can
only be judged in relation to the war as a whole. It
was their duty to study their own position with concentrated attention. We had to try to think for all.” —WSC, The Hinge of Fate, 1951 ✌
HISTORY DETECTIVES
Feeding the
Crocodile: Was
Leopold Guilty?
F
ollowing correspondence with Daniel Wybo of London, Ontario,
Finest Hour wishes to set out what we know of King Leopold III of the
Belgians, and Churchill's remarks about the Belgian surrender on 28 May
1940. Mr. Wybo's interest is through the memory of his father, who fought
in the Battle to defend the canal at Ghent-Terneuzen in the area of Terdonk.
Taken prisoner by the Germans, the elder Wybo escaped and later became
part of the Belgian underground. “My father was always bitter about how
our King was treated,” Mr. Wybo writes, “and over the great lies propagated about his actions.” Reprinted material by kind permission of
Winston S. Churchill and Curtis Brown Ltd., Andrew Roberts and David
Reynolds. Our thanks to Lt. Col. Louis Van Leemput, Warren Kimball, Daniel
Wybo, Paul Courtenay and James Lancaster for assistance in research.
1. The Controversy
Leopold III (1901-83) was
King of the Belgians from 1934
through 1951. Born in Brussels,
the son of Albert I, he married
Princess Astrid of Sweden in 1926.
The Queen died in a car accident
in 1935, and in 1941 Leopold
married morganatically a commoner, Lillian Baels—which was
criticized by many Belgians, particularly after the events of 1940.
Belgium, which had adopted
a “policy of independence”
(armed neutrality) in 1936, was
invaded by Hitler on 10 May 1940.
Belgium appealed for help, and
Anglo-French forces took up
defensive positions along the Dyle
River, while the Belgians held the
Albert Canal line to the northeast.
German glider troops captured
the key fortress at Eben-Emael,
forcing the Belgians to fall back to
the Dyle before the French could
set up their positions. The resulting battle found the French still in
possession of the field, but with
an irreplaceable loss of 105 tanks.
A broader crisis was developing meanwhile at Sedan, where
on 14 May German Panzers broke
the French line, crossing the River
Meuse. Allied forces in Belgium
were ordered to withdraw, and
within a week , the French Army
of the North, the entire British
Expeditionary Force, and the
Belgian Army were encircled. On
the 25th the Belgian government
fled to France, but the Belgian
Army kept fighting until the 28th,
providing extra time and protection to the withdrawing Allies.
Leopold remained to face the
Germans. Refusing to administer
his country in accord with their
demands, he was imprisoned in
his palace at Laeken until 1944.
Leopold’s surrender was vilified by French Prime Minister
Paul Reynaud, and, more importantly, his own exiled government
in unoccupied France. Churchill’s
old colleague Lloyd George, no
paragon of virtue in 1940, wrote
on 2 June: “You can rummage in
vain through the black annals of
the most reprobate Kings of the
earth to find a blacker and more
squalid sample of perfidy and
poltroonery than that perpetuated
by the King of the Belgians.”1
In November 1940, Leopold
contributed to his future unpopularity by visiting Hitler in
Berchtesgaden, asking for the liberation of Belgian prisoners of war
and improvement of food provisions. Hitler ultimately released
Flemish-speaking prisoners and
allowed a Flemish parliament to
be set up, but he would not
release French-speaking Belgians,
and food supplies remained low.
Leopold continued to feud
with his government-in-exile,
which in late October arrived in
London. In January 1944 he wrote
a “political testament” to be published if he were not in Belgium
when it was liberated. Herein he
declared that all international
agreements of his exiled government (including an important one
granting the Allies access to
uranium in the Belgian Congo)
were invalid because they did not
have the Royal signature. He lived
in exile in Austria after the war,
refusing to withdraw his criti-
where their government-in-exile
remained for the duration of the
war.4
Churchill’s relatively equable
handling of the subject in June
1940 was too much for the
excitable Reynaud, who complained bitterly that Leopold had
let down the Franco-British armies.
Churchill thus added in his book:
1940: German troops invade Belgium, which put up a stiff resistance.
cisms of the wartime government.
After a 1950 “people’s consultation” over his return, in which 72
percent of Flemish-speakers voted
in favor and 58 percent of Frenchspeakers against, Leopold
returned briefly to the throne. But
continued controversy, including
three days of riots and two deaths
in Liège, caused him to abdicate
in favor of his son, Baudouin, the
following year. He has remained a
controversial figure to this day. Churchill’s comments in the
Commons about King Leopold’s
surrender, though not as censorious as those of Reynaud or Lloyd
George, were certainly significant:
I have no intention of suggesting
to the House [WSC said in the
Commons] “that we should
attempt at this moment to pass
judgment upon the action of the
King of the Belgians in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the
Belgian Army. This army has
fought very bravely and has both
suffered and inflicted heavy losses.
The Belgian Government has dissociated itself from the action of
the King, and, declaring itself to be
the only legal Government of
Belgium, has formally announced
its resolve to continue the war at
the side of the Allies.3
He wrote in rather milder terms
in the second volume of his
postwar memoirs: Upon all this there now descended
a simplifying catastrophe. The
Germans, who had hitherto not
pressed the Belgian front severely,
on May 24 broke the Belgian line on
either side of Courtrai, which is but
thirty miles from Ostend and
Dunkirk. The King of the Belgians
soon considered the situation hopeless, and prepared himself for
capitulation. 2
Churchill was being inordinately kind to the exiled Belgian
government, then in France, led
by Prime Minister Pierlot and
Foreign Minister Paul-Henri
Spaak (a postwar secretarygeneral of NATO and founder of
what became the EU). That same
government which Churchill said
was resolved to continue the war
had repeatedly asked Leopold to
sign an armistice with Hitler—
which conveniently might have
allowed them to return to Brussels
(as Nazi puppets). Spaak later
admitted that, by refusing his
support, Leopold had prevented
him and his colleagues from
becoming Nazi collaborators. But
at the time, Spaak and Pierlot considered the war to be lost. Later
they found their way to London,
Concern was expressed by the
French Government that my reference to King Leopold’s action was
in sharp contrast to that of M.
Reynaud. I thought it my duty,
when speaking in the House on
June 4, after a careful examination
of the fuller facts then available,
and in justice not only to our
French Ally but also to the Belgian
Government now in London, to
state the truth in plain terms:
“At the last moment, when
Belgium was already invaded,
King Leopold called upon us to
come to his aid, and even at the
last moment we came. He and his
brave, efficient Army, nearly half a
million strong, guarded our left
flank and thus kept open our only
line of retreat to the sea. Suddenly,
without prior consultation, with
the least possible notice, without
the advice of his Ministers and
upon his own personal act, he sent
a plenipotentiary to the German
Command, surrendered his Army,
and exposed our whole flank and
means of retreat.
“The brave and efficient army of
which I spoke had indeed conducted itself in accordance with its best
traditions. They were overcome by
an enemy whom it was beyond
their power to resist for long. That
they were defeated and ordered to
surrender is no slur upon their
honour or reputation.” 5
2. What Really Happened?
While much has been written
on the Leopold matter, there are
several recent and rather revealing accounts, the first of which
was written by the historian
Andrew Roberts abut the political
aspects of the debate: >>
HISTORY DETECTIVES
LEOPOLD III...
It is indicative of the changing
nature of the King’s [George VI’s]
relationship with Churchill that he
did not protest against what he
knew to be an undeserved slur on
King Leopold III of the Belgians by
the Prime Minister. Leopold had
written to George VI on 25 May
warning him of his country’s
imminent surrender, a fact proven
by the King’s answering telegram
to Brussels the next day urging
him not to become a prisoner. The
King therefore knew that
Churchill was guilty of a particularly gross “terminological inexactitude” for his depiction of the
Belgian capitulation three days
later as a treacherous surprise. On
the day of his return from the
Continent, Britain’s special envoy
to Leopold, Admiral Roger Keyes,
was visited by an Intelligence
officer, who demanded all the documents from his mission. Keyes
successfully concealed them and
showed them to the King to disprove Churchill’s calumnies. Thus the King knew the truth, as
did Churchill. Seven months later,
sitting in an air raid shelter with
Roosevelt’s adviser, Harry
Hopkins, he “expressed a good
deal of sympathy with King
Leopold,” and although he refused
to allow his brother monarch to be
stripped of his colonelcy in the
British army, or have his Garter
banner removed from St George’s
Chapel, George VI did not, as
Leopold had hoped, “insist that
his Prime Minister should uphold,
rather than pervert, the truth concerning these circumstances.”
Admiral Keyes’s son has since
stated: “Had the existence of
Leopold’s warning letter to
George VI, or even a paraphrase of
its contents been made public...the
French, Belgian and British Prime
Ministers’ false allegations would
have been completely demolished.” Whilst it might be understandable
for raisons d’état for the King to
have kept silent in the summer of
1940 when Britain desperately
needed a scapegoat to explain the
Allied defeat, the King permitted
this unwarranted slur to continue
after the war, even to the extent of
Leopold not being invited to
Princess Elizabeth’s wedding in
1947. To Harry Hopkins the King
had confided the view that the
Belgian Monarch “should have left
the country and established his
government elsewhere.” Yet this
was precisely the course that the
British royal family has constantly
been given credit for having
refused to contemplate in their
own case. 6
George VI wasn’t the only
person Leopold had warned,
according to a contemporary
account in Time: On May 20 the Belgian King sent
word to the Allies through Sir
Roger Keyes that should his troops
lose contact with the French and
British, “capitulation would be
inevitable”....[Roger Keyes] wrote
nothing, merely asked the British
public to suspend its judgment
until all the facts were known. For
this he was attacked by the Daily
Mirror and he sued the paper for
libel. Last week, in getting an
apology in court, he made the facts
public at last. On 27 May, the day
before he surrendered, Leopold
had asked Keyes “to inform the
British authorities that he would
be obliged to surrender before a
debacle took place. A similar
message was given the French.” 7
3. Publishing Repercussions
For the history of Churchill’s
Leopold account in his memoirs,
the most important and scholarly
sourcework is David Reynolds’ In
Command of History (now available
in paperback from Basic Books via
Amazon.com and others):
For Churchill’s publishers Their
Finest Hour proved no less of a
challenge than The Gathering
Storm. They faced the same impossible deadlines, constant changes
and autocratic demands. Reviews
were also beginning to set in a
mould—many being panegyrics
rather than analyses. The big
exception was for the French
edition, significantly re-titled
L’Heure Tragique, because in France
and Belgium 1940 was a national
disaster and a running sore in
postwar politics. As before, reception depended on audience as
much as intention.
The British had been vilified by
many on the continent for deserting their allies. Churchill therefore
took pains to show they did their
utmost in a situation that was
already hopeless—emphasizing
that the British Expeditionary
Force was ready to counter-attack
at Arras on 21-22 May 1940 but
insisting that it also had to protect
its line of retreat to the sea. He
deflected attention onto the precipitate Belgian surrender, quoting
his speech to the Commons on 4
June 1940 which followed Paul
Reynaud, the French Prime
Minister, in placing the blame
squarely on King Leopold:
“Suddenly, without prior consultation, with the least possible notice,
without the advice of his Ministers
and upon his own personal act, he
sent a plenipotentiary to the
German Command, surrendered
his Army and exposed our whole
flank and means of retreat.”
As he completed Their Finest Hour,
Churchill found these words
coming back to haunt him. The
stigma of surrender had marked
Leopold ever since May 1940.
Unlike the Dutch, Danish and
Norwegian monarchs, he stayed
with his troops rather than joining
the government-in-exile in
London, and was taken to
Germany when the Allies liberated
Belgium. His brother acted as
Regent and Left-wing parties campaigned to block his return. The
“Royal Question” became the
most vexed issue in Belgian politics and much of the debate
revolved around interpretations of
May 1940. In mid-January 1949,
three weeks before serialization
began, La Libre Belgique, an ultramonarchist paper, printed six
front-page articles quoting and
rebutting statements critical of the
King by Churchill, Reynaud and
others. Hurriedly General Pownall
[WSC’s literary adviser on military
aspects] and Churchill checked
their final draft of “The March to
the Sea.” On the German breach of
the Belgian line on 24 May they
had written: “The King of the
Belgians considered the situation
hopeless, and already thought
only of capitulation.” This was
amended to “soon considered the
situation hopeless, and prepared
himself for capitulation.”
Churchill had also made reference
to Reynaud’s denunciation of King
Leopold’s “treachery.“ After
hurried research [literary assistant
Bill] Deakin advised him that
Reynaud had never used the word
“treachery”—this was an old
Vichy canard. The offending sentences were removed, as was the
phrase “this pitiful episode” from
the speech of 4 June 1940. These
and other last-minute revisions,
resulting in six new pages of
proofs, were all incorporated in
the final text.
Nevertheless, when the serial
version appeared Churchill was
attacked for his 4 June 1940
comment about the King surrendering his army without prior consultation. Sixty-eight Belgian generals published a petition in
February 1949 calling his remarks
“neither accurate nor fair.” After
consulting the Prince Regent
[Leopold’s younger brother
Charles, Count of Flanders], who
believed no amendments were
necessary, Churchill stuck to his
guns. “I am not attempting to
write a History of the Second
World War,” he told one critic,
“but only [to] give the story of
events as they appeared to me and
the British Government.”
Receiving no response, the petitioners took advantage of
Churchill’s visit to Brussels at the
end of May to reissue their declaration, to which another twentytwo generals had added their
names. Deakin warned that the
document was “a manifesto destined for internal Belgian consumption” and that its probable
intent was to “lure you into controversy round the position of the
King.” Following the Belgian elections in June 1949, a new coalition
instituted a referendum on
Leopold’s return. As far as
Churchill was concerned, the fuss
then died down except for one
fervent British partisan of
Leopold, Olive Muir, who
harangued him in letters and at
public meetings about why he had
not replied to the generals. 8
The Belgians, Churchill
wrote, “fought with gallantry and
determination” but “were put into
the war so late that they could not
even occupy their own prepared
front lines.” By now Leopold was
back on the throne and his secretary wrote to Churchill expressing
the King’s “profound astonishment” at an attack on “the honour
of Belgium” and what amounted
to a charge of “criminal negligence” by Leopold as commander-in-chief. Churchill, Pownall and
[literary agent] Emery Reves all
agreed that silence was again the
best course, and the Belgian material was omitted when the statement finally appeared [in the]
preface to the second French
edition.9
4. Was Leopold Guilty?
A canard Churchill once
repeated is that “wherever there
are three Jews it will be found that
there are two Prime Ministers and
one leader of the Opposition.”10
This is nothing when it comes to
Flemish- and French-speaking
Belgians. Belgium is a “manufactured country,” and disagreements
have long existed between its two
populations. No one opinion is
likely to satisfy both sides.
In 1936, as Hitler, unopposed, reoccupied the Rhineland,
the Belgian government adopted a
position of “armed neutrality,”
refusing to join an alliance with
France and Britain while arming
Belgium for any future conflict,
remembering how their country
had been trampled in 1914. As a
result, Belgium was one of the
better-prepared nations when
Hitler marched west in 1940. Although Belgium did share
military information with the
Allies, as a proclaimed neutral it
could not allow Allied forces to
pre-position themselves or march
with Belgian forces until it was
actually invaded. Oliver Harvey,
British Minister in Paris, wrote in
his diary in January 1940: Poor Leopold is in a desperate
dilemma. If he commits himself to
a military agreement, the Germans
will say he has violated his neutrality and so justify a German
invasion. If he doesn’t get agreement with us and France we
cannot afford him proper help if he
is attacked—a vicious circle.
Moreover, it can be represented as
an Allied interest that Germany
should not invade Belgium and
therefore Belgium should not
provoke Germany. The answer is, I
suppose, that Germany will
invade Belgium if it suits, whatever Belgium does. 11
Winston Churchill took a dim
view of neutrals. For him there
were only two options in the face
of Hitler: fight or surrender. Each
neutral, WSC said on 20 January
1940, “hopes that if he feeds the
crocodile enough, the crocodile
will eat him last. All of them hope
that the storm will pass before
their turn comes to be devoured.
But I fear—I fear greatly—the
storm will not pass.”12
But Leopold’s stance was
based not on Churchill but on the
governments that ruled France,
Britain and Belgium in the 1930s,
which had resolutely refused to
oppose Germany’s numerous
aggressions. Against that kind of
leadership, however forlorn the
hope that Hitler would leave
Belgium alone, as commander of
the Belgian forces, Leopold had
few alternatives. When Hitler attacked in May
1940, Holland went down in four
days, but Belgium fought bravely
for two weeks, its artillery taking
a deadly toll on the invaders.
Prolonged resistance contributed
to the successful evacuation at >> HISTORY DETECTIVES
1950: Anti-Leopold demonstrators.
LEOPOLD III...
Dunkirk, where 340,000 French
and British soldiers were rescued.
Nearly all the French soldiers
refused to join Free French forces
in Britain and returned to France.
The Belgian government, then in
exile in unoccupied France,
forbade Belgian soldiers to leave,
and even court-marshalled Belgian
pilots who had flown to Britain or
North Africa, accusing them of
having stolen their aircraft!13
Leopold had little joy from
some of his allies. When General
Gort, commander of the British
Expeditionary Force, pulled back
from the coast to protect access to
Dunkirk (leaving the Belgian right
flank unprotected) he did not tell
the Belgians, nor indeed his own
government, until after the fact.
Meanwhile General Pownall, commander of British forces in
Belgium (the same Pownall who
would later assist Churchill in
writing his war memoirs)
remarked at the time: “we don’t
give a bugger what happens to
the Belgians.”14
Clearly, the idea that
Leopold surrendered without
prior warning is denied by the
facts. Leopold did not communicate with his own government,
which, as he saw it, had cut and
run; but he certainly warned
George VI and Admiral Keyes. On 27 May he informed General
Crampon (French Military
Attaché) and Colonel Davy
(British Military Mission), who in
turn informed General Percival at
the War Office. Upon returning to
London the next day, Keyes
sought an interview with
Churchill, who would not see him
and forbade him to make any
public statements on the situation.
But Churchill had additional considerations.
Churchill’s position as Prime
Minister was by no means solid.
On 28 May, the same day the
Belgian Army surrendered, Lord
Halifax was arguing that the
British cabinet should enquire
through Mussolini the German
terms for an armistice. The pressure on Churchill was enormous,
not least from his now nearly hysterical ally Reynaud; he desperately wanted to keep France in the
war, if only as another government in exile.
With these points in mind
one may dispute Andrew Roberts’
suggestion that Churchill said
what he did because Britain
needed a scapegoat. Often a
scapegoat himself, WSC rarely pilloried individuals for catastrophe,
and told his country the full
nature of this one. The suggestion
that George VI expected Leopold
to reign in exile, while he himself
never intended to do so, is irrelevant because Britain was never
occupied; for George VI, the decision to leave never arose.
Churchill’s effort to keep
France in the war failed, but he
kept Britain fighting, and eventually garnered an alliance that won
it all back, Belgium included.
Churchill’s postwar writings were
markedly milder than his speeches in 1940. He consulted with
Leopold’s brother, whose relationship with the King had turned
sour and he assured Churchill that
no further amendments were necessary. Churchill’s memoirs
proved insufficient to satisfy all of
Leopold’s supporters, but
realpolitik also was at play here:
Churchill saw no benefit in sticking his finger in the collective
French eye, over a very sore
subject in postwar France.
Much of the criticism of
Leopold arose from internal
Belgian politics. He was hardly the
only one who underestimated
Hitler’s ruthlessness. In 1940, as
Oliver Harvey suggested, he was
damned if he did, and damned if
he didn’t. That he went to see
Hitler is not criminal; he wished to
reduce the suffering of his people.
On the weight of the evidence it is
fair to record that Leopold III was
an honorable man. ENDNOTES
1. Jackson, Julian, The Fall of
France (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), paperback edition, 93-94.
2. Churchill, Winston S., Their
Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949),
83-84.
3. Ibid., 73-74.
4. John Cairns, letter to the
editor, The Independent, London, 10
January 1996.
6. Roberts, Andrew, Eminent
Churchillians (London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 1994), 42; the quotes are
from Keyes, Roger [son of Admiral
Keyes], Outrageous Fortune: The
Tragedy of King Leopold of the Belgians
1901-1941 (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1984), 308-10, 396.
7. Time, 23 January 1941. See:
http://xrl.us/bfn99.
8. Reynolds, David, In Command
of History: Churchill Fighting and
Writing the Second World War
(London: Allen, 2006), 204-05.
9. Ibid., 207-08.
10. Churchill, Winston S.,
Closing the Ring (London: Cassell,
1951), 470.
11. Jackson, op. cit., 76.
12. Churchill, Winston S., Blood
Sweat and Tears (Toronto: McClelland
& Stewart Ltd., 1941), 252. Speech of
20 January 1940.
13. Lt. Col. Louis Van Leemput,
Belgian Air Force (ret.) to Daniel
Wybo and the author; Col. Van
Leemput, who was 13 at the outbreak
of war in 1940, is National Chairman
of the Royal League of Veterans of
King Leopold III. ✌
14. Jackson, op. cit., 93. Books, Arts
&
Churchill Centre Book
Club
Managed for the Centre by
Chartwell Booksellers
(www.churchill-books.com), which
offers member discounts up to
25%. To order contact Chartwell
Booksellers, 55 East 52nd Street,
New York, New York 10055, email
bscb@dti.net, Winston’s Brother Jack Finally Gets His Due
TED HUTCHINSON
R
elying extensively on the papers
xof the late Peregrine Churchill,
Winston’s nephew, Celia and John
Lee offer an appealing book about
a legendary figure and his almost
unknown brother. They begin with
the boys’ parents, Lord Randolph
and Jennie Churchill: their backgrounds, courtship, and early years
of marriage. The Lees track Winston
and Jack’s childhood (confirming,
as other scholars have, that it was
not quite as unhappy a time as
Winston’s autobiography suggests).
We see the brothers as adults, their
love and friendship giving them the
strength to cope during trying
times. The book closes by considering how the lives of their children
have intertwined and shaped our
remembrances.
The book tells us little that is
new about Winston. The chapters
on his youth are interesting, but his
adult life, which has been studied
as closely as anyone’s in history, has
few mysteries left to reveal, and
none are unveiled here. This book’s great service is its
accessible and valuable portrait of
Jack Churchill. While Jack was the
only sibling of Winston Churchill, I
can honestly say I did not know
much about him before starting the
book, although I have read quite a
lot on Winston. All credit to the
authors for providing much that is
new about an important figure in
Winston’s life. Winston &
Jack: The
Churchill
Brothers, by
Celia and
John Lee
(Celia Lee,
2007): 408
pages, £25.
Contact the
Churchill
Centre
Book Club for CC member price.
The Lees build a portrait of
Jack that is at once impressive and
humane. Jack was in many ways a
simple man, a family man. He
loved his wife, children and brother
dearly. He was a hard worker and
ambitious (a successful businessman in the City of London), but he
was also content to support rather
than emulate Winston’s quest for
political prominence. Indeed, through the material
about Jack we are able to glean
important insights about Winston,
the man of whom there is seemingly little new to learn. For Jack, in
some ways, seems almost to be a
reflection of Winston—without the
searing ambition that drove WSC to
the height of politics. They were both military men.
They were both family men. They
enjoyed great literature and the fellowship of a few close friends. But
Jack was content to avoid the limelight. One could imagine Winston
as Jack—if Winston were born
without that nagging little voice
entreating him to reach for greatness. It is a credit to the authors,
then, that we receive a full portrait
of both men, even if the portrait of
Winston is familiar. That said, the book is not
without its flaws. There are a
number of sweeping statements not
supported by the evidence offered,
including the claim at a number of
points (e.g., 346) that Winston
advanced his career at the expense
of Jack. This is unsupported by the
papers and biographies of both
men, and frankly seems disrespectful to both. For example, the authors say
Jack was not credited for helping to
organize his brother’s biography of
their father or the World Crisis
volumes (172). There is no correspondence in the Churchill Archives
Centre, which we consulted, on
Jack’s work with these books, and
none is footnoted here. Is it not possible that the self-effacing Jack
specifically asked that he receive no
acknowledgement? That seems
more in character than the idea that
WSC purposely ignored his
brother’s role.
Two pages later we read:
“How ironic of Winston [in 1896] to
berate Jack for ‘drifting languidly
and placidly’...when he himself was
abandoning his first choice [Army
career] even before it had begun.”
(174) The Churchill canon clearly
reveals that WSC looked upon the
Army as a springboard to >> WINSTON & JACK...
politics: “…it is not my intention to
become a mere professional soldier.
I only wish to gain some experience. Some day I shall be a statesman as my father was before me”
(Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, 3). “Drifting languidly” was
hardly Winston’s way—though, on
the evidence, it was sometimes
Jack’s. Both men acted in accordance with their characters, and
diminishing Winston to build up
Jack is unhelpful in understanding
their historical standings or their
character as real people. The authors spend an
immense amount of time on Jennie
and Randolph, dissecting their relative merits and failures, and meticulously parsing such things as their
extra-marital affairs. There is a great
deal of material on Jennie’s affair
with the Prince of Wales, a seeming
irrelevancy to the story at hand.
But on correcting old myths
the Lees are reliable. Lord
Randolph, they note, did not leave
his family destitute (though Jennie
denied her sons their rightful inheritance when she remarried). Jack
was Randolph’s son, despite
unfounded claims to the contrary
by various writers. Lord Randolph
likely died of a brain tumor; the
origins of the syphilis story are
tracked to family antagonisms and
the scandalous memoirs of a disaffected literary agent. But footnotes
are sparing. Although there is a well
annotated “list of names,” in which
some of these references are found,
it is not always easy to patch
together the sources of the conclusions.
I personally do not believe
that Jennie and Randolph’s behavior needs particularly to be
“defended,” except where it affected their sons. It was what it was,
and these digressions distract from
the central message of the book.
Nor does it seem correct to “remind
our readers that Winston’s early
career was advanced at the expense
of his younger brother Jack.” Leave aside Jack’s retiring
nature; consider only his brother,
the self-described “glow-worm,” so
laden with talent that one colleague
said his headlights were so bright
they sometimes blinded him. Yes,
young Winston had a few corners
cut for him by his mother. But he
rose on his own immense talent and
ambition, a climb both rapid and
astonishing—as were his numerous
but temporary reversals. Make no mistake: this book’s
central message is a valuable one.
Winston & Jack is a work of earnest
good intentions in a world where
many authors try to make money
off the Churchill name with a
“quickie” biography. Moreover, this is surely the
best book ever written about Jack’s
life. It should be read by any
Churchillian, like myself, who has
wanted to know more about this
man who remained in the shadows
despite the glare shone on his
brother. The authors deserve much
credit for bringing Jack Churchill
“Keep your Bowels Open and
Your Kidneys Flushed”
WARREN F. KIMBALL
The First Day
of the Blitz:
September 7,
1940, by Peter
Stansky. Yale
University
Press, 200
pages, $24.
Member price $19.20.
“A
t tea-time, or to be precise
xat 4:14 pm on Saturday,
September 7, 1940, 348 German
bombers...and 617 Messerschmitt
German fighters crossed the English
Channel into British airspace,
forming a block 20 miles wide,
filling 80 square miles of sky. The
most concentrated assault against
Britain since the Spanish Armada.
This was the first day of the London
Blitz....” An evocative opening to a
compelling little book. How evocative? Evocative of
the immensity of the attack.*
Evocative of Britain’s greatest
strategic asset—the English
Channel, which had kept both the
Armada and Napoleon at bay.
Evocative of British refusal to
appear frightened or to act differently in the face of destruction, best
summed up in the word “tea-time.”
But let us take our tea a bit later,
and look at how the book works.
Peter Stansky, an accomplished
historian of modern Britain, deftly
takes us from British preparations
for air attacks during the Thirties,
the actual bombings, civil defense,
public reactions (taken heavily from
memoirs and similar recollections as
well as early histories), and on to a
discussion of the myths, realities,
and legacies of the Blitz. The story is
about how Londoners rich and poor,
posh, East and West End, blue collar
and intellectual, responded. They
were, after all, the true stalwarts. Government leaders and
senior officials make only cameo,
though appropriate appearances.
The oft-cited visit of the King and
Queen to the East End is balanced
*The Blitz was not the heaviest air terror attack on British lands. In just March and April
of 1942, over twice the tonnage of bombs fell on the tiny island of Malta as were
dropped on London during the entire Blitz; Oxford Companion to the Second World War
(Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 713. Although the Malta siege is
not mentioned by Stansky, one hopes that he will consider a follow-up comparing it
with the London Blitz. The parallels are striking. FINEST HOUR 138 / 48
by less than complimentary comments about the Royals by locals.
Churchill’s actions and rhetoric
appear at the right places. Stansky
credits his oratory with a “central
role.” But the book is about
Londoners, not the Royals or
Churchill; and properly so. (I
would suggest that understanding
Churchill’s leadership requires an
understanding of the London Blitz,
not the other way round.) Inadequate and unimaginative
civil defense preparations created
long-lasting resentments. Planners
expected more deaths and failed to
provide for homelessness—a far
greater problem. “Tragic as they
would be,” writes Stansky,
“bodies—though presenting all
sorts of difficulties—were nevertheless a terminal problem.” (121) Horrific events like the widely
publicized South Hallsville School
bombing, where a school packed
with refugees whose homes had
been destroyed itself suffered a
direct hit, added to the perception
of government having failed. The
cock-up came when buses scheduled to evacuate the school showed
up a day late (“eerily similar” to the
late arrival of Hurricane Katrina
evacuation busses, Stansky notes). This is not to say that the
Beveridge Plan of postwar social
reform was a direct result of the
South Hallsville disaster, or of the
repeated instances of bureaucratic
timidity and small-thinking (no
toilets in bomb shelters, limits on
free blankets lest people stay too
long at a rest center, discouraging
use of the Underground as bomb
shelters lest fear and panic be contagious). But it was a small step from
the need to broaden government
responsibilities during war to
extending them in time of peace.
Two days after the Blitz began, a
newspaper ad for a health tonic
offered, with unintentional humor, a
bridge between government responsibilities and the “carry on” reactions of Londoners. “No Act of
Parliament compels you to look
after yourself. It’s up to you to...[use
the tonic and] keep your bowels
open and your kidneys well
flushed,” somehow making that
part of the war effort.
Britons were no braver than
others, said a number of observers,
but their style “is peculiar to the
national character.” One diarist
noted that most East Enders “are
taking the raids with that curious
stolidity that baffles both the enemy
and the home propagandist” (141).
It was more than just propagandists
who were surprised. Government
plans had often assumed the public
would be demoralized, particularly
Jews and foreigners. Not everyone
was “heroic.” But for those
Londoners who stayed in the city—
which was the overwhelming
majority either because they chose
to or had no choice—the persistent
reaction to Nazi terror bombing was
vocal anger directed at the “Jerries,”
and quiet stubbornness. On the last day of the London
Blitz some nine months later (10
May 1941), nearly 1500 Londoners
died. But that there was a last day,
Stansky notes, illustrates that terrorism rarely achieves its goals. (This is
a comforting thought in our own
times, until you think about being
one of those 1500 killed.) In the end, the “ordinary”
people of London won their victory.
Hitler did more than blink. As Eric
Sevareid wrote in 1946: “The
Germans lost their nerve; the British
did not, and so they won out” (135).
I promised you tea. Perhaps
the Nazis made their most fatal
mistake by interrupting Londoners
at tea-time. Whatever the whimsy
of that occult comment, tea epitomized their reaction to the Blitz. Within minutes after the Blitz
began, London was awash with tea.
To take but one story: A fireman
recalled a woman sobbing at the
sight of her burned out home and
telling another elderly lady about
the damage. “Never mind luv,” said
the second woman, “let’s go in and
try and make a cup of tea” (89). ✌
Smoking Banns
McGinty relies strongly on the
Churchill Papers at Cambridge,
whose electronic catalogue produces no fewer than 295 cigar references. Most are orders to and
accounts from well-known suppliers in London and New York, and
copies of letters to prominent
persons, notably in Cuba, thanking
them for gift boxes.
The book is entertaining but
unfortunately adds little to our
store of knowledge. Presumably,
there is a market for only one book
on this subject and it is a pity that
Mr. McGinty did not consult more
widely. About a third of the text
outlines well-known details of
Churchill’s career, and there is other
“padding.” The most interesting
chapter, “Protecting the Prime
Minister,” is but an expanded
version, duly acknowledged, of
Allen Packwood’s “Cigars:
Protecting the Premier,” which
appeared in Finest Hour 106. It is >>
ALFRED JAMES
Churchill’s
Cigar, by
Stephen
McGinty.
Macmillan, 230
pages, $27.95.
Contact the
Churchill Book
Club for
member price.
I
n the quest to record every facet
of Churchill’s life, inevitably
someone would examine his association with cigars. Author McGinty
is a journalist in Scotland—where,
ironically, smoking is banned
almost everywhere.
Mr. James, of Wahroonga, N.S.W., is
President of Churchill Centre Australia.
built around the testing in 1941 of
two percent of an extraordinary gift
of 2400 cigars from Cuba. By the
time the testing was completed and
a couple of mice had died (for
reasons uncertain), it was found
that Churchill had already tested
other cigars from the collection on
members of his Defence Committee!
The author interviewed a
former secretary, the late Elizabeth
Nel, and WSC’s last private secretary, Anthony Montague Browne.
But nothing seems to have been
extracted from the memoirs of
bodyguards Walter Thompson and
Edmund Murray, Life editor Walter
Graebner, valet Norman McGowan,
secretary Phyllis Moir, General Sir
Ian Jacob (in Action This Day), and
G.S. Harvie-Watt. Their books
contain many details as to how
Churchill acquired, carried, cut, lit,
re-lit, chewed and disposed of his
cigars. I especially like Murray’s
anecdote that it was his job to
collect the remains of Churchill’s
cigars and give them to Mr Kern
(McGowan calls him “Kearns”), a
gardener at Chartwell, who used
them in his pipe. Norman McGowan’s description of the ritual of WSC lighting
his first cigar of the day in bed is
worth repeating:
First he took off the band [against
the advice of Zino Davidoff in The
Connoisseur’s Book of the Cigar] and
pierced the cigar with a long
match, of a kind he had specially
imported from America. Then he
lit the candle which he has always
at his bedside, and warmed the
end in its flame. Next he lovingly
wrapped a piece of gummed
brown paper [made by Cartier,
according to Graebner] round the
other end. “I designed that
myself,” he told me. “I call it a
Belly-bando. It stops the end from
becoming too wet when I chew it.”
This seems to have served the same
purpose as “the blotting paper ring
which looked like a very small
doughnut” which Ronald E.
Golding (Finest Hour 35) said was
designed by Churchill’s butler,
Greenshields. But few stories such
as these appear in Churchill’s Cigar,
nor do some thirty references,
including auction prices, in Finest
Hour, most of which could have
been found in the Index to
Numbers 1 to 100.
Bill McVey, who did the sculpture outside the British Embassy in
Washington, says that Churchill
was holding or smoking a cigar in
about 260 of the 300 photographs he
had examined (Finest Hour 36). Mr.
McGinty is probably correct in his
statement that “His cigar became a
potent political prop, a handy
pointer and a steady source of
solace….He was also aware of the
image the cigar projected, one of
relaxed confidence, and the appeal
this would have with the electorate.” In later life WSC always
kept a partly-smoked cigar in his
pocket for the benefit of photographers, as he put it: “People must see
their ageing lion tearing up his
gazelle or they’d say he’d lost his
teeth” (Finest Hour 131).
Although I live in Australia,
Mr. McGinty has told me one thing
I didn’t know. In the town of
Churchill, 100 miles west of
Melbourne and built in the late
1960s, the Rotary Club has erected
an edifice known as “The Big
Cigar” as a memorial to Churchill.
It is over 100 feet in height. ✌
Over Hill, Over Dale....
CHRISTOPHER H. STERLING
Churchill Goes
to War:
Winston’s
Wartime
Journeys, by
Brian Lavery.
Conway and
U.S. Naval
Institute
Press, 392
pages, $34.95,
member price $27.95.
A
retired curator at the National
Maritime Museum at
Greenwich and a naval historian,
Brian Lavery has plumbed a variety
of primary source records as well as
published accounts to relate the
story of Churchill’s long-distance
wartime trips (other than to western
Europe). Many aspects of WSC’s
dangerous and arduous sea and air
journeys to meet with Roosevelt,
Stalin and other leaders from 1941
to 1945 have been told before.
Indeed, some books have focused
on the topic, notably Gerald Pawle’s
The War and Colonel Warden (1964),
long rated highly. Several books
covered the aircraft and their crews
that Churchill used, and Celia
Sandys’ Chasing Churchill (2003)
included the wartime trips among
others before and after. But this new
account is by far the best, providing
new details and deeper context for
each voyage or air journey.
Lavery is an experienced
writer and it shows—this is a readable account with few factual
bobbles. One of the few is a statement (89-90) that the Boeing 314
Clipper flying boat was “the first
[aircraft] in the world designed
mainly for crossing oceans.” Not so,
though it was the best of those that
could. The endpapers feature the
wonderful photo of Churchill in the
Boeing’s pilot’s seat, with the huge
cigar that surely nobody else would
be allowed to smoke in a cockpit! Lavery skewers a long-told
tale that in flying Churchill to
England from Bermuda in January
1942 (the first transatlantic air trip
by any country’s leader), the flying
boat had been within minutes of
over-flying German gun batteries at
Brest, on the coast of France. With a
good map and careful sleuthing of
the archives, the author shows that
(despite Churchill’s war memoirs)
the plane was far from the French
coast. In any case, Churchill flew on
a sister flying boat less than six
months later, back to Washington in
one long hop from Scotland. Maps charting the wartime
travels are clear and to the point,
and help the reader follow some of
the odd routing required to avoid
enemy interception. The text
focuses on the actual travel time
and the vehicles used far more than
what happened at the meetings.
Progressive improvements in
Churchill’s aircraft (ultimately a C54 Douglas Skymaster) are evident
in the growing comfort of the long
flights toward the war’s end, compared to the difficult conditions on
the early Commando, a transport
version of the B-24.
By far the most luxurious trips
were by sea—especially three
aboard the Cunard-White Star liner
Queen Mary: two in 1943, the first to
New York (and then by train to
Washington to meet Roosevelt) and
the second to Halifax (and by train
to Quebec for the “Quadrant”
summit). The third came in 1944 for
yet another Quebec summit. The
party returned from the second trip
on the battlecruiser Renown, where
Churchill’s daughter Mary was
nearly swept overboard by a huge
wave. (See Vic Humphries,
“Glimpses from the ‘Taxi’: HMS
Renown 1943,” FH 113:24-25, Winter
2002-03.) Renown also took Churchill
and party to Egypt late in 1943 for a
conference at Cairo and then the
specially-equipped York aircraft
“Ascalon” carried him on to
Teheran for the first meeting of the
Big Three. This was the trip where
Churchill, already weakened by a
cold and the long hours of several
successive conferences, ended up
briefly on a nearly deserted landing
strip in North Africa, thanks to confusion in RAF communications.
Pneumonia set in and with that
WSC had to endure an enforced
stay (mainly in Marrakesh) to
recover.
Still more travel was to
come—including a trip to see Stalin
in Moscow in October 1944, to Yalta
in early 1945, and to the first
portion of the Potsdam summit in
mid-1945. To help illuminate these
many voyages and flights, Lavery
has found interesting little personal
stories that help to bring alive the
process as well as dangers of
wartime travel. All told, this book is
a marvelous read of an era quite
different from the much-heralded
aerial processions of national
leaders these days. ✌
Three Great New Standards
Chris:
download
image from
Amazon, I
can’t get on
the web.
Gandhi and Churchill:
The Epic Rivalry That
Destroyed an Empire
and Forged Our Age,
by Arthur Herman.
Bantam, 684 pages,
$30, member price
$24.
C
Chris:
download
image from
Amazon, I
can’t get on
the web.
Churchill & Chartwell:
The Untold Story of
Churchill's Houses and
Gardens, by Stefan
Buczacki. Frances &
Lincoln, 324 pages, 214
illustrations, $40,
member price $32.
Gandhi and Churchill
utting through decades of
narrow or shallow reporting,
Arthur Herman offers a balanced
and elegant account of two famous
personages, which captures both
Churchill’s generosity of spirit and
Gandhi’s greatness of soul. While
recognizing their faults, he shows
what motivated them and made
them great—with impressive
research which in Churchill’s words
leaves “no stone unturned, no cutlet
uncooked.” The last two chapters,
and the author’s conclusion, are
This is a review of a pre-publication
copy; the final text may be altered.
Fateful Choices: Ten
Decisions that
Changed the World,
1940-1941, by Ian
Kershaw. Penguin,
600 pages, $35,
member price $28.
alone worth the price of what will
be the standard work on the subject.
The book is comprehensive,
with well-researched chapters on
the early life of both figures, contrasting Churchill’s upbringing in
glorious Victorian Britain with
Gandhi’s in a prosperous, loving
family in the Princely State of
Gujarat—his father, like Churchill’s,
a political figure of some repute.
The author tells us how each man’s
attitude was shaped by the other’s
country, recounting Churchill’s
early visits to India and Gandhi’s to
England. Next comes their brief
encounter on 28 November 1906,
when Gandhi pleaded with the >> GANDHI AND CHURCHILL...
32-year-old Churchill on behalf of
Indians in the Transvaal, who were
being deprived of their rights as
British subjects by the Boer majority.
Churchill was impressed by
Gandhi’s “marshalling of the facts”
and promised to do what he could.
Gandhi never forgot, and thirty
years later told a mutual friend: “I
have got a good recollection of Mr
Churchill when he was in the
Colonial Office and somehow or
other since then I have held the
opinion that I can always rely on his
sympathy and goodwill.”
Gandhi evolved from a loyal
British subject to the head of India’s
independence movement following
incidents like Amritsar, the 1919
massacre of Indians by a British
general who fired into a crowd.
Gandhi was apprised of the situation not least by Churchill, who
spoke against it in the strongest
terms: “What I mean by frightfulness is the inflicting of great slaughter or massacre upon a particular
crowd of people....Frightfulness is
not a remedy known to the British
pharmacopoeia....” Churchill is often visualized as
unalterably opposed to Indian independence, which is a simplification.
He softened toward Gandhi when
the latter declared for equal rights:
“Mr Gandhi has gone very high in
my esteem since he stood up for the
untouchables.” But Churchill
adamantly opposed the India Act of
the 1930s, and broke his political
pick over it, opposed overwhelmingly by all three British political
parties.
Churchill subsided when the
India Bill passed in 1935, telling
Gandhi to “use the powers that are
offered and make the thing a
success...” But in World War II as
Prime Minister, with his nation’s survival at stake, he would brook no
deviation from what he saw as the
common cause. In 1943, when
Gandhi was arrested and confined to
luxurious captivity, he declared he
would fast until Britain declared she
would quit India. Churchill was
certain that Gandhi added glucose to
his drinking water to sustain himself.
At Casablanca, Churchill remarked
to the U.S. consul: “Now, Pendar,
why don’t you give us Morocco, and
we shall give you India. We shall
even give you Gandhi, and he’s
awfully cheap to keep, now that he’s
on a hunger strike.”
Arthur Herman, who has the
measure of the two great antagonists,
offers a balanced and generous
verdict. Churchill, he says
had never understood Gandhi, any
more than Gandhi had understood
him. The reason was simple. The
confrontation in February 1943 was
not just between two willful men,
or between imperialism and
freedom, or between what Louis
Fischer later called ‘the past of
England and the future of India.’ It
was no longer even about two different conceptions of empire. The
confrontation, rather, was between
two different conceptions of life.
One rested on secular and humanistic traditions that had been tested
by history and centuries of human
conflict. The other rested on a
vision of spiritual purity in which
history and material things
(including Gandhi’s own body)
counted for nothing....In short,
both men loved freedom and
liberty, but of two fundamentally
different kinds. Both were capable
of great ruthlessness in pursuit of
their goals precisely because of
their confidence in those twin but
opposite visions, which had sustained them through defeats and
disappointments that would have
destroyed weaker human beings.
Together they might have complemented each other’s strengths and
bolstered each other’s weaknesses.
Instead, in February 1943, they
went head to head in a final contest
of wills, with the fate of India and
the Second World War at stake.
This is a truly informative
book on two great leaders, with no
axes to grind, like so many authors
who have disparaged them in the
past. It is sensitive, balanced, fair,
and beautifully written. ✌
Churchill & Chartwell
CHARTWELL, 15 SEPTEMBER 1934—
“Forty winks in the afternoon and then
(unexpectedly) bathing at 7 in pouring
rain, intensely cold with a grey halflight of approaching night, yet curiously enough very enjoyable in its oddness.
Freda Ward, Winston, Duff, Clemmie,
Randolph and a child, in fact the whole
party, were splashing about with gleeful
screams in this sad crepuscule. The
secret is that the bath is heated, and it
is Winston’s delightful toy.
He summoned Inches the butler: ‘Tell
Allen to have a lot more coal on. I want
the thing full blast.’ But Inches
returned to say that Allen was out for
the day. ‘Then tell Arthur I want it full
blast.’ But it was Arthur’s day out as
well, so the darling old schoolboy went
surreptitiously and stoked it
himself for half an hour, coming in on
the verge of apoplexy.”
—Lady Diana Cooper, The Light of Common Day.
London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1959, 155.
C
hartwell and its estate fill only
half of this book. Stefan
Buczacki admits that, having set out
to write about Churchill’s most
famous home, he was soon captivated by all the others, and realized
that to be truly comprehensive he
must cover them all: primary residences, government quarters, loans
from or shares with family or
friends, country houses, even
holiday cottages. The result is the
first comprehensive book about
where Churchill lived throughout
his long and eventful life, a surprising three dozen separate residences.
(See Ampersand, page 58.) The coverage is total, beginning with 48 Charles Street, where
Winston spent his first five years,
through his bachelor flat on Mount
Street, his first house on Bolton
Street, official residences (Admiralty
House, Ministry of Munitions, 10
and 11 Downing Street), the friends’
and relatives’ homes he used, and
his “three” holiday properties
(including Chequers, the Prime
Minister’s country estate, as well as
Lullenden.) Buczacki, who has
penned over fifty books on gardening and natural history, immersed
himself in the archives, and his endnotes extend to fifteen pages.
The author benefitted from
“two significant pieces of good
fortune”: the unpublished papers of
Chartwell architect Philip Tilden,
with whom Churchill uproariously
contended through Chartwell’s
initial reconstruction; and a trove of
hitherto closed papers in the
Churchill Archives relating to
WSC’s farms. Illustrations, so vital
to this story, are profuse, for the
author obtained photographs of
many of the residences today, supplementing numerous contemporary photos, documents, maps and
plans. Even the endpages support
the work, with a select family tree
at the front and a plan of
Chartwell’s gardens at the back.
We learn how Churchill
acquired and lived in his properties,
took up farming, and took up
horseracing and maintained a stud.
The combined fiscal failure and personal delight of his farming, and the
precarious finances of his horsey
activities, are covered with accuracy
and humor. Such thorough research
inevitably provides correctives to
misunderstandings, such as how
Churchill the Chartwell bricklayer
joined the Amalgamated Union of
Building Trade Workers. He did not
seek membership, as legend has it,
but was invited to join by James
Lane, Mayor of Battersea and a
union organizer. Churchill responded that he did not think himself
qualified, but asked to see the
Rules. Encouraged by Lane, he
filled out the application, sent in his
5 shillings, and was issued a membership card. This produced a backlash from the reliably left-wing
union members. “You damned old
hypocrite!,” wrote someone who
signed himself “A British subject
sodden with Taxation.” “It would
do you & the country good if you
were forced to earn your daily
bread by laying bricks instead of
playing at it, & making yourself
look a fool.” The Union dodged this
PR nightmare by declaring WSC’s
application invalid on technicalities.
It was rather a good thing that
Churchill did not have to earn his
bread bricklaying, as Buczacki suggests. His Chartwell wall-building
was greatly abetted by a mate
named Benny Barnes, who apparently cleaned up after him. A photograph was published in 1928,
showing him at work on his daughter’s playhouse (the “Marycot”),
with “one corner brick perched
extremely precariously.” A professional bricklayer responded: “Now,
Sir, this is not on a par with your
State work, and I would urge you to
attend to its alignment and correct
placing....”
Such episodes are so amusing
that I wished for more of them. The
archives-based material is somewhat clinical, and lacks many of the
priceless observations published
from time to time by such erudite
friends as Diana Cooper (facing
page). Churchill’s interaction with
locals as a “Townsman of
Westerham” (the title of an obscure
but good 1969 booklet by Percy
Reid) is not included. Happily,
however, Buczacki mentions the
gypsy, “Mrs. Donkey Jack,” whom
WSC befriended and offered a place
to live in his own wood. Longtime
secretary Grace Hamblin’s
“Chartwell Memories,” delivered at
our 1987 conference and republished in FH 118, would alone have
provided an intimate account of life
at Chartwell and the peregrinations
of its famous master. I would have
liked to see larger format maps and
floor plans, but this is the end of my
criticism. This is a thoroughly indispensable “standard work,”as important
for the library of any serious
Churchill student, as the memoirs
of close associates like Jock Colville
and Anthony Montague Browne.
What closer associates did Churchill
have than the houses he lived in? ✌
Fateful Choices
Sometimes, All It Takes is a Shrug
“What a story! Think of all these
people—decent, educated, the story of
the past laid out before them—What to
avoid—what to do etc.—patriotic,
loyal, clean—trying their utmost—
What a ghastly muddle they made of it!
Unteachable from infancy to tomb—
There is the first and main
characteristic of mankind."
—WSC to Beaverbrook, 21 May 1928 I
an Kershaw, whose two-volume
biography of Hitler is acclaimed,
has written a fascinating book on
what Churchill might call the “ten
climacterics” of World War II:
Britain’s decision to fight on in May
1940; Mussolini’s decision to attack
Greece; Stalin’s decision to trust
Hitler; Japan’s decisions to expand
southward and to go to war with
the United States; Roosevelt’s decisions to help Britain and to wage
undeclared war against Germany;
Hitler’s decisions to attack Russia,
to declare war on the USA and to
commit genocide in Europe.
While many chapters cover
familiar ground, Kershaw does so
in a fresh way, pulling together key
sources that reveal the reasoning (or
lack of it) behind each decision—
which, together, settled the outcome
of the war, and the world we know
today. The only fault of the book is
a degree of academic overkill: the
chapters average nearly 50 pages
each, and Kershaw is so intent on
producing all the evidence that he
runs the risk of violating an old editorial adage: “a bore is someone
who tells everything.”
The most gripping chapters
are those that explain the inexplicable: Japan’s decision to go to war
with the United States, a war both
the Emperor and Prime Minister
expected they would probably lose;
and Hitler’s decision, four days
after Pearl Harbor, to declare war
on the United States: an enemy he
could not strike at, but which could
soon strike at him. >>
FATEFUL CHOICES
Kershaw offers a revisionist
view of Hideki Tojo, the Army chief
turned Prime Minister often cast as
a bloodthirsty aggressor. Though a
hard-liner as head of the Army,
once he became Prime Minister in
October 1941, Tojo wanted an
accommodation as much as the
Emperor (maybe because of the
Emperor, whom he worshiped as
divine). By sending a high-level
diplomat, Kurusu Saburo, to
support Ambasssador Nomura
Kichiasburo in Washington, Tojo
and his foreign minister, Shigenori
Togo, signalled a serious desire for
a settlement with the Americans.
(After Japan’s Tripartite Pact with
Germany and Italy in September
1940, Roosevelt had embargoed iron
and scrap metal; with Japan’s invasion of Indochina in July 1941, FDR
froze Japanese assets in the U.S. and
embargoed oil shipments—in those
days the USA was an oil exporter. Kershaw paints Secretary of
State Cordell Hull the way
Churchill allegedly painted Dulles:
“He is the only case of a bull I know
who carries his china closet with
him..” As the clock ticked in late
1941, Hull frustrated negotiations at
every turn. He rightly rejected the
Japanese “Plan A,” letting Japan run
amok in East Asia. He seemed to
accept, but finally rejected “Plan B,”
which offered a pull-back of
Japanese forces from Indochina and
an agreement to vacate China “at an
agreed future date.” Nor was FDR consistent:
“While Hull and the State
Department dampened prospects of
an accommodation, the President
himself appeared still open to the
possibility of one” (367). In his
don’t-tell-them-everything-you’rethinking approach, Roosevelt ran
hot and cold on requested meetings
with Japan’s foreign minister or
Emperor. First FDR would hint that
he wanted a “modus vivendi”; then
he would play hardball, refusing to
consider any terms by which he
would normalize relations. Finally Hull replied with his
“Ten Points,” including all previous
demands and some new ones. In
exchange for normalized relations
Japan was required “to withdraw
from China and Indochina,
renounce her extraterritorial rights
and concessions dating back to the
turn of the century, following the
Boxer Rebellion, to recognize no
other Chinese government but that
of Chiang Kai-shek, and effectively
to abrogate the Tripartite Pact” with
Germany and Italy. (369). Those
were terms no Japanese government
could accept. Hull was unclear as to
whether he also wanted Japan to
abandon its puppet state of
Manchukuo. In fact he did not—but
he didn’t bother to make this clear. Too late FDR realized, “this
means war”; he did not know Pearl
Harbor was the target, but he must
have known he’d backed Japan into
a corner. Call me a cynic and you’ll
be right: but if George W. Bush and
his Secretary of State handled the
Iranians like Roosevelt and Hull
handled the Japanese, and ended
up getting bombed for their pains,
there would be a full-scale outcry
and a Congressional investigation.
K
ershaw also reveals much about
Hitler’s decision to declare war
on America four days after Pearl
Harbor—one of the most inexplicable acts of the war. Carefully he
reviews Hitler’s thoughts on the
“American Union” from his earliest
speeches in 1919. He concludes that
the Western Hemisphere never seriously figured in Hitler’s plans
(despite the now-famous forgery of
a German map carving up South
America)—except as some longdistant final confrontation which
might have to be undertaken by a
second generation of Nazis.
Hitler thought the “European
armaments industry was greater
than the American. And he had
experienced American soldiers in
the First World War [and believed]
the Germans were far superior”
(405). But longer term, he was smart
enough to realize that Germany was
on borrowed time. He knew when
he invaded Russia that he must win
quickly, compel Stalin’s surrender,
then turn on Britain with his full
forces and compel an armistice. By 1943, Hitler said, the
mighty engine of American industry would be engaged on behalf of
Britain and the Soviets, and any
hope of Germany for European
mastery would be ended. Thus the
Fuhrer warned his trigger-happy
naval chief, Admiral Raeder, to
avoid provocations in the Atlantic,
even after Roosevelt had occupied
Iceland and expanded the Atlantic
security zone far to the east. Why then did Hitler declare
war after Pearl Harbor? Logic did
not play a part here. The Tripartite
Pact (Hitler’s stated reason)
required Germany to declare war
only if Japan had been attacked. The
idea that he went to war to “fulfill a
commitment” to Japan seems farfetched. (When did Hitler honor
any commitments?) So infuriated were Americans
over Pearl Harbor that, absent a
German declaration, Roosevelt
might not have asked for (or might
not have obtained) a U.S. declaration of war on Germany. Churchill’s
rush visit to Washington after Pearl
Harbor, remember, was predicated
on the urgency he saw that FDR
adopt a policy of “Germany first.”
In declaring war, Hitler took
little military advice, other than that
of the belligerent Raeder, and even
his Navy chief admitted that in
December 1941 not one U-boat was
anywhere near the U.S. Astonishment at Hitler’s move
was expressed by even sycophants
like Goebbels. Many experienced
soldiers privately (very privately)
confessed they saw doom in
Hitler’s act. “One ordinary soldier,
confident that Germany would
eventually prove victorious, nevertheless confided to his diary on the
day of Hitler’s Reichstag speech,
that it meant ‘war for our lifetime.’
‘Poor parents,’ he added” (383). >>
Why did Hitler do it? The
answer, it seems, was a “shrug.”
Hitler knew that sooner or later
Germany would have to confront
the Americans. Why not now? That
was all it amounted to: a shrug. It
proved fatal.
Despite his disdain toward the
enemy he had known in Great War,
Kershaw notes, Hitler by the autumn
1941 had “contemplated for the first
time the possibility of defeat,”
saying “that if in the end the
German people should not prove
strong enough, then Germany
deserved to go under and be
destroyed by the stronger power.”
(We may recall Hitler’s “scorched
earth” orders as the Russians
advanced on Berlin in 1945.) Kershaw sees this as very
highly revealing: “Beneath the
veneer, Hitler seems to have recognized that his chances of total
victory had by now all but evaporated...It was a characteristic attempt to
wrest back the initiative through a
bold move. But for the first time it
was a move doomed from the very
outset to failure” (430).
“W
hat a story!” Japan’s leadership is of two minds
about going to war. The United
States is also of two minds—or is
she? Between Roosevelt and Hull, it
is hard to tell. Emperor Hirohito
and his entire cabinet believe that if
they go to war, they will probably
lose. So...to war they go! Hitler through December 1941
has practiced uncharacteristic
restraint in not provoking the
Americans, knowing correctly that
he cannot afford such a mighty
enemy until the Russians are
subdued. He knows if America gets
involved, Germany will probably
lose. So...to war he goes! Fateful Choices is an amazing
commentary on the occasional (one
hopes) irrationality of high-level
decision-making: a book which
ought to be read by our modern
decision-makers (present and
future), before they do something
stupid. Again. ✌
POEMS CHURCHILL LOVED
Crimea, 1945 and
“The Charge of the
Light Brigade”
JOSHUA GREENBERG
I
found the original of this
photograph in the Museum
of the Black Sea Fleet in
Sebastopol, Ukraine. Visiting
museums in Russia and the
Ukraine is a completely different
experience for Westerners. To take
photographs you must pay a fee. I
was charged two Hryvnas (about
55p) per photo. Some museums are
so under-funded that they have to
economize on lighting. So a
museum worker sometimes follows
you around the halls switching the
Mr. Greenberg is a young member of
ICS (UK). Besides traveling “in search of
Churchill,” he is a volunteer at the
Churchill Museum and Cabinet War
Rooms, London.
lights off after you.
The photo at right, taken in
February 1945 by the Russian war
photographer A. Mashuyev, is purportedly of Churchill visiting the
British Crimean War Cemetery
outside Yalta. But Finest Hour senior
editor Paul Courtenay has identified the figure as Field Marshal
Henry Maitland Wilson. Wilson appears saddened to
see the cemetery in such a state. In
the background the land is ash
black and the graves are destroyed.
The face of the Russian officer
standing behind Wilson hints that
he may have felt the same sorrow.
The memorial stands on Cathcart
Hill, named for the British
Lieutenant-General George
Cathcart, who planned the infantry
manoeuvres during “The Charge of
the Light Brigade” in 1854.
Although the 1945 visit was
lightly documented in the western
press, it was on Churchill’s itinerary
after the Yalta Conference ended.
The Cemetery was badly run down;
it had been neglected under Soviet
rule, and was extensively damaged
under Nazi occupation. Invaded in 1941, the Crimea
suffered badly. About 115 villages
were burned to the ground and
their inhabitants were sent to concentration, extermination and >> POEMS CHURCHILL LOVED
CRIMEA, 1945...
forced-labour camps in Germany,
Poland and Austria. By May 1944,
the Red Army had regained control. The Charge of
the Light Brigade
25 October 1854
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
A second photo from the same
source shows Field Marshal Alan
Brooke and Admiral Cunningham,
flanking a Soviet naval officer.
Today the area has been
greatly restored and there is a
memorial enclosure and obelisk to
commemorate the British dead. It is
situated on one of the hills in
Balaclava, “The Valley of Death,”
where the Charge took place.
I think it would be fair to conclude that Churchill was among the
party visiting the Cemetery out of
interest in the Crimean War, whose
history he had studied deeply. Churchill particularly admired
The Invasion of the Crimea (1863), by
Alexander William Kinglake. When
asked how to write good history,
Churchill once recommended,
“Read Kinglake.” There are lines in
Kinglake which prefigure WSC’s
style, and in an 1898 article on frontier policy Churchill wrote: “I shall
take refuge in Kinglake’s celebrated
remark, that ‘a scrutiny so minute
as to bring a subject under a false
angle of vision is a poorer guide to
a man’s judgment than the most
rapid glance that sees things in their
true proportions.’”
Surely the Prime Minister
wanted to visit the scene so nobly
described by Tennyson in one of his
favourite poems. One could well
imagine him reciting the lines on
that very scene.
2.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
4.
Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
5.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
http://poemsandprose.blog.co.uk/2005/12/
3.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
6.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
Poems of Alfred Tennyson
Boston: J. E. Tilton & Co., 1870 ✌
Level 3:
7. On 6 June 1944,
whom did WSC order to
be sent back to Algiers “in
chains if necessary”? (C)
8. What journal did
WSC call the New Porker? (L)
9. Whom did some Tories call
the “Blenheim Rat”? (P)
10. What did WSC mean when
he said to Christopher Soames in
1954: “I have no intention of going,
until either things get a lot better—
or I get a lot worse!”? (P)
11. When did Churchill cable
Roosevelt: “It is twenty-seven years
Level 2:
13. When and why did
Churchill resign from the
Conservative Shadow Cabinet? (S)
14. On 1 May 1940, looking
out on a rainy Horse Guards Parade
where a sudden squall had
descended, Churchill said, “If I
were the first of May, I should be —
of myself.” Fill in the blank. (P)
15. In 1963, who quoted
Edward R. Murrow, that Churchill
“mobilized the English language
and sent it into battle”? (L)
16. What was WSC referring to
when he wrote: “Let me have the best
solutions worked out. Don’t argue
the matter. The difficulties will
argue for themselves”? (W)
17. During which
tripartite conference
between the USA,
France and Britain
was WSC seen
reading C.S.
Forrester’s Death to
the French? (S)
18. Whom
did WSC describe
circa 1950 as
having “fallen
below the level of
events”? (C)
Level 1:
19. When did WSC
first use the phrase
“special relationship”? (S)
20. Whom was WSC referring
to in October 1940 when he said they
were “At war but skulking”? (W)
21. With whom did WSC often
stay at La Pausa, (which he referred
to as “Pausaland”) on the French
Riviera? (M)
Answers
(1) Winston Churchill. (2) Hitler.
(3) Max Aitken, later Lord
Beaverbrook. (4) The chapter
“Education in Bangalore,” in My
Early Life. (5) Flying. (6) Churchill,
MP for Dundee from 1908 to 1922. Level 4:
1. After whom did George
Orwell name his hero Winston
Smith in his 1949 novel 1984? (L)
2. “Negotiating with __ was
impossible. He was a maniac with
supreme power to play his hand out
to the end, which he did; and so did
we.” To whom does WSC refer? (W)
3. Which Canadian newspaper
proprietor was a long-term friend of
Churchill’s? (C)
4. In which of WSC’s books
does he write: “So I resolved to read
history, philosophy, economics and
things like that”? (L)
5. What did WSC
refer to when he said,
“The air is a seductive
mistress, but an affair
with her does not always
end in old age”? (M)
6. To whom did F.E.
Smith refer when he said, “I see
from the Dundee Advertiser,
I mean the paper, not the
politician…” (P)
(7) Charles de Gaulle. (8) The New
Yorker. (9) Winston Churchill, for
crossing the floor to the Liberals
in May 1904. (10) That he had no
intention of resigning as Prime
Minister. (11) 4 August 1941.(12)
The men of the Eighth Army. E
ach quiz includes four questions in each of six categories: Churchill contemporaries (C), literary matters
(L), miscellaneous (M), personal details (P), statesmanship (S) and
war (W), with the easier questions first.
Can you reach Level 1?
ago today that the Huns began their
last war. We must make a good job
of it this time.”? (C)
12. In 1943, to whom did WSC
say: “When history is written and
all the facts are known, your feats
will gleam and glow, and will be a
source of song and story long after
we who are gathered here have
passed away”? (W)
(13) 26 January 1930, over India.
(14) “ashamed.” (15) President
John Kennedy, granting Churchill
honorary citizenship of the United
States. (16) The floating piers used
for the Mulberry harbours. (17)
Bermuda, December 1953. (18)
The Duke of Windsor.
by James Lancaster
22. In 1911, which club invited
Churchill and F.E. Smith to join, and
then blackballed them? “It was like
asking a man to dinner and kicking
him down the steps before he
entered your house.” (M)
23. Following Churchill’s
victory at Oldham on 1 October
1900, who begged him to speak at
Manchester and other marginal constituencies? (S)
24. When did WSC say: “I
refuse to be shut up in a soup
kitchen with Mrs Sidney Webb”? (M)
(19) Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March
1946—the “Iron Curtain” speech.
(20) The Irish. (21) Emery and
Wendy Reves. Emery was WSC’s
longtime literary agent. (22) The
Literary Club, founded by Samuel
Johnson and Joshua Reynolds in
1763. (23) Prime Minister Arthur
Balfour. Churchill had asked him
to speak on Churchill’s behalf in
Oldham, but Balfour had
declined. Churchill then helped
Balfour by speaking in many
other constituencies: “Quite a few
victories followed in my wake.”
(24) When he turned down the
presidency of the Local
Government Board in 1908.
CHURCHILL QUIZ
AMPERSAND
&
Churchill’s Residences
This is an
update on
"Ampersand"
in Finest
Hour 103,
Summer 1999, kindly provided by Mr.
Buczacki, author of the excellent new
book Churchill & Chartwell, reviewed
on page 52. —Ed.
T
his list is as complete and accurate as I can make it. More complete details, including the holiday
homes where they stayed with
friends, and also London hotels
used as short-term accommodation,
are in my book. Overseas holiday
residences are excluded. There are
overlaps in several dates when
more than one house was owned,
leased or lived in at the same time.
Dates are essentially those of ownership, not necessarily when the
Churchills actually moved in or left.
Please note that most London
houses are in practice held on longterm leases rather than strictly
owned as freeholds, and usually
belong to institutions or Trusts.
Primary Residences of WSC:
owned, leased or provided officially
48 Charles Street (January
1874—1879). Leased by Lord
Randolph Churchill.
The Little Lodge, Dublin
(January 1877—April 1880). Official
residence of Lord Randolph
Churchill.
29 St. James’s Place (April
1880—late 1882). Leased by Lord
Randolph Churchill.
2 Connaught Place (late
1882—1892). Leased by Lord
Randolph Churchill. The family
moved into Duchess Fanny’s at 50
Grosvenor Square (see below),
where Lord Randolph died in 1895.
105 Mount Street (1900—late
1905). Leased by WSC; his first
bachelor flat.
12 Bolton Street (December
1905—March 1909). Leased by
by Stefan Buczacki
WSC, the first house of his own and
became his first married home.
33 Eccleston Square (Spring
1909—May 1918). Not lived in
between May 1915 and late 1916,
since it was leased to Lord Grey
from 1913. First house purchased by
WSC after his marriage.
Admiralty House (April
1913—May 1915). Official residence,
available to WSC from 1911 but not
lived in until 1913. Ministry of Munitions house,
probably in Whitehall Place (May
1918—late 1918 or early 1919).
Accommodation officially provided
to the Minister of Munitions.
1 Dean Trench Street (early
1919—early 1920). Rented from the
Hon. Victoria Adeane.
2 Hyde Park Street (late
summer 1919—May 1920). Purchased
by WSC but never lived in.
2 Sussex Square (November
1919—January 1925). Owned by
WSC. Lived in from February 1920
to 1924, then leased, and finally sold
in February 1925. Demolished following irreparable bomb damage
sustained in March 1941. 11 Downing Street (January
1924—April 1929). Official residence.
11 Morpeth Mansions (late
November/early December 1931—
late 1939). Leased by WSC.
Admiralty House (September
1939—July 1940). Official residence.
10 Downing Street & Number
Ten Annexe (early summer 1940—
July 1945). Official residences.
28 Hyde Park Gate (September
1945—1965). Combined with 27
Hyde Park Gate from August 1946.
Owned by WSC but subdivided
and let while the family lived at 10
Downing Street.
10 Downing Street (December
1951—April 1955). Official residence.
Family or Friends’ Loans or Shares
50 Grosvenor Square (1892—
1895). Owned by Duchess Fanny.
Now demolished.
35a Great Cumberland Place
(1895—1900). Owned by Lady
Randolph Churchill.
10 Carlton House Terrace
(January—February 1908). Owned
and loaned by Lord and Lady
Ridley.
22 Carlton House Terrace
(March—May 1909). Owned and
loaned by Freddie Guest.
21 Arlington Street (May—late
July 1915; CSC until October).
Owned and loaned by Ivor Guest.
72 Brook Street (July 1915—
November 1915). Owned by Lady
Randolph Churchill.
41 Cromwell Road
(October/November 1915—Autumn
1916). Owned by and shared with
Jack and Goonie Churchill.
16 Lower Berkeley Street
(September—November 1918). Now
Fitzhardinge Street. Owned and
loaned by Lady Horner. 3 Tenterden Street (Autumn
1918) Owned and loaned by Lady
Cornelia Spencer-Churchill. Now
demolished.
Templeton, Roehampton (Late
October 1919—February 1920).
Owned and loaned by Freddie
Guest.
62 Onslow Gardens (Winter
1929 and probably Winter 1930).
Owned and loaned by Venetia
Montagu.
67 Westminster Gardens (July
1945—September 1945). Leased and
loaned by Diana and Duncan
Sandys.
Country Houses
Lullenden, East Grinstead,
West Sussex (February 1917—
November 1919). Owned by WSC.
Chartwell, Westerham, Kent
(November 1922 to 1965). Lived in
from around April 1924. Owned by
WSC; officially owned by the
National Trust after WW2.
Chequers (early summer
1940—July 1945; December 1951—
April 1955). Official residence. ✌
Churchill Centre Regional and Local Contacts
AFFILIATES ARE IN BOLD FACE
Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Spencer Churchill
Society of Calgary, Alberta
Mr. Justice J.D. Bruce McDonald
500 - 323 - 6 Ave. S.E., Calgary AB T2G 4V1
Society of Edmonton, Alberta
Dr. Edward Hutson, Pres. (jehutson@shaw.ca)
98 Rehwinkel Road, Edmonton AB T6R 1Z8
tel. (780) 430-7178
Society of Alaska
Judith & Jim Muller (afjwm@uaa.alaska.edu)
2410 Galewood St., Anchorage AK 99508
tel. (907) 786-4740; fax (907) 786-4647
Churchill Centre Arizona
Larry Pike (lvpike@Chartwellgrp.com)
4927 E. Crestview Dr.,
Paradise Valley AZ 85253
bus. tel. (602) 445-7719; cell (602) 622-0566
Rt. Hon. Sir Winton Spencer Churchill
Society of British Columbia
Christopher Hebb, Pres.
(cavell_capital@telus.net)
1806-1111 W. Georgia St., Vancouver, BC
V6E 4M3 tel. (604) 209-6400
England: ICS (UK) Woodford/Epping Branch
Tony Woodhead, Old Orchard,
32 Albion Hill, Loughton, Essex 1G10 4RD
tel. (0208) 508-4562
England: ICS (UK) Northern Branch
Derek Greenwell, “Farriers Cottage”
Station Road, Goldsborough
Knaresborough, North Yorkshire HG5 8NT
tel. (01432) 863225
Churchill Centre North Florida
Richard Streiff (streiffr@bellsouth.net)
81 N.W. 44th Street, Gainesville FL 32607
tel. (352) 378-8985
Winston Churchill Society of Georgia
William L. Fisher (fish1947@bellsouth.net)
5299 Brooke Farm Rd., Dunwoody GA 30338
tel. (770) 399-9774 • www.georgiachurchill.org
Winston Churchill Society of Michigan
Michael P. Malley (michael@malleylaw.com)
3135 South State St., Ste. 203,
Ann Arbor MI 48108
tel. (734) 996-1083; fax (734) 327-2973
Churchill Round Table of Nebraska
John Meeks (jmeeks@wrldhstry.com)
7720 Howard Street #3, Omaha NE 68114
tel. (402) 968-2773
California: Churchillians of the Desert
David Ramsay (rambo85@aol.com)
74857 S. Cove Drive, Indian Wells CA 92210
tel. (760) 837-1095
New England Churchillians
Joseph L. Hern (jhern@fhmboston.com)
340 Beale Street, Quincy MA 02170
tel. (617) 773-1907; bus. tel. (617) 248-1919
Churchillians by the Bay
Richard Mastio (rcmastio@earthlink.net)
2996 Franciscan Way, Carmel CA 93923
tel. (831) 625-6164
Churchill Society of New Orleans
Edward F. Martin (tmartin@joneswalker.com)
2328 Coliseum St., New Orleans LA 70130
tel. (504) 582-8152
Churchillians of Southern California
Leon J. Waszak (leonwaszak@aol.com)
235 South Ave. #66, Los Angeles CA 90042
bus. tel. (818) 240-1000 x5844
Churchill Society of Greater New York City
Gregg Berman (gberman@fulbright.com)
c/o Fulbright & Jaworski, 666 Fifth Avenue
New York NY 10103 • tel. (212) 318-3388
Churchill Friends of Greater Chicago
Phil & Susan Larson (parker-fox@msn.com)
22 Scottdale Road, LaGrange IL 60526
tel. (708) 352-6825
North Carolina Churchillians
A. Wendell Musser MD
(amusser@nc.rr.com)
1214 Champions Pointe Drive
Durham NC 27712; tel. (919) 477-1325
Colorado: Rocky Mountain Churchillians
Lew House, President
(lhouse2cti@earthlink.net)
2034 Eisenhower Drive, Louisville CO 80027
tel. (303) 661-9856; fax (303) 661-0589
Churchill Centre Northern Ohio
Michael McMenamin (mtm@walterhav.com)
1301 East 9th St. #3500, Cleveland OH 44114
tel. (216) 781-1212
Churchill Society of Philadelphia
Bernard Wojciechowski
(bwojciechowski@borough.ambler.pa.us)
1966 Lafayette Rd., Lansdale PA 19446
tel. (323) 661-9856
South Carolina: Bernard Baruch Chapter
Kenneth Childs (kchilds@childs-halligan.net)
P.O. Box 11367, Columbia SC 29111-1367
tel. (803) 254-4035
Tennessee: Vanderbilt University
Young Churchill Club; Prof. John English
(john.h.english@vanderbilt.edu)
Box 1616, Station B, Vanderbilt University,
Nashville TN 37235
North Texas: Emery Reves Churchillians
Jeff Weesner (jweesner@centurytel.net)
2101 Knoll Ridge Court, Corinth TX 76210
tel. (940) 321-0757; cell (940) 300-6237
Churchill Centre South Texas
James T. Slattery (slattery@fed-med.com)
2803 Red River Creek
San Antonio TX 78259-3542
cell (210) 601-2143; fax (210) 497-0904
Sir Winston Churchill Society of
Vancouver Island
Barry Gough, Pres. (bgough@wlu.ca)
3000 Dean Ave., P.O. Box 5037,
Victoria, BC V8R 6N3; tel. (250) 592-0800
Washington (DC) Society for Churchill
Dr. John H. Mather, Pres.
(Johnmather@aol.com)
PO Box 73, Vienna VA 22182-0073
tel. (240) 353-6782
Washington (State): Churchill Centre Seattle
www.churchillseattle.blogspot.com
Simon Mould (simon@cckirkland.org)
1920 243rd Pl., SW, Bothell, WA 98021
tel. (425) 286-7364
Chapter Mentor:
Richard Mastio (rcmastio@earthlink.net)
2996 Franciscan Way, Carmel CA 93923
tel. (831) 625-6164
Outside North America:
Paul Courtenay (ndege@tiscali.co.uk)
Park Lane Lodge, Quarley, Andover, Hants.
SP11 8QB UK; tel. (01264) 889-627
✌
BACK COVER:
THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF THE FULL WRAP
AROUND COVER.SEE PAGE 1

the journal of winston churchill spring 2008 • number 138

Transcription

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